An Introduction Pesäpallo, The Finnish Baseball

Pesäpallo (Finnish baseball) is a good example of how aspects of a foreign game can be assimilated into a popular pastime of another culture.With origins in an informal game played by villagers and country people in a rather free-for-all fashion, Finnish baseball has evolved into a more competitive and formal sport with organized clubs, standardized rules, uniforms, and modern equipment.

The development of Finnish baseball has clear connections to the industrialization of its native country in the 20^th century. The rules and organization of the game have evolved with the population migration into towns and cities and the increasing commercialism of contemporary life.

History

The modern game of Finnish baseball is based on the traditional game of “king’s ball,”in which a ball of birch bark (later a fist-sized leather ball) was pitched straight up in the air and hit by a player wielding a board or long racket. A similar game was played in Germanspeaking areas as Schlagball, in Nordic countries as långboll, and in Russia as lapta. All were peasant, or “folk” games, played outdoors, and in principle anyone could participate.

A good deal of improvisation and something of a carnival atmosphere characterized this early game. There was no clear method for keeping score, players taunted each other freely and vigorously, and games regularly ended in open quarrel and stone throwing. Modern Finnish baseball was the brainchild of Lauri “Tahko” Pihkala (1888–1981), a journalist, philosopher, sport historian, and critic of modern competitive sport. Pihkala’s primary interests lay in national defense and in the educational possibilities of sports.

In 1914, Pihkala initiated modifications to king’s ball to create what he envisioned as a more functional, disciplined, and competitive game.He viewed the original game as a confused “crowd game” that did not offer players sufficient scope for exercising responsibility and initiative.

As early as 1907, Pihkala had watched baseball games in the United States and sought to incorporate aspects of American baseball into his developing concept of Finnish baseball. Pihkala saw American baseball as a hitting and running game in which the rules produced more frequent exchanges of teams “at bat,” speeding up the game. He viewed the American game as a form of “trench warfare” and proposed developing Finnish baseball into a “mobile war” between bases, in conformity with the basic Finnish military doctrine of forest warfare,which was to “fire and move”(i.e., shooting or throwing a hand grenade, and then plunging ahead) (Klemola 1963, 51–52, 237).

Rules and Play

The contemporary game is guided by a set of conventional rules and tactics developed over the years since Pihkala’s campaign to “modernize” the sport. It is played on a field measuring 40 by 94 meters (131 by 308 feet) (somewhat smaller for women’s teams) with standard-sized bats and balls.

Like American baseball, the Finnish game has nine innings, and each team fields nine players. Eight members of the fielding team are positioned around the field, and the lukkari (pitcher) attempts to prevent the batter from getting a hit. Unlike the horizontal pitches in American baseball, Finnish pitches are vertical (straight up), which gives the pitcher greater tactical opportunities to mislead the batter and precludes power pitching. The ball must be pitched so that it falls on home plate if it is not struck.

A batter has three chances (strikes) to get on the field.Once he has gotten on base, succeeding players attempt to get on base themselves and advance the preceding players in the field. As in American baseball, a player is out if the ball reaches the base before he does. A run is scored when a player makes the circuit of three bases and reaches home plate. The batting team has at least nine attempts, plus one after each run, to get onto the field. When the batting team has burned three times, by failing to reach the base before the ball, the teams change places.

One major difference between American and Finnish baseball is that the Finnish ball field has a rear boundary over which the batter may not hit the ball. Hitting the ball beyond the boundary is known as an “illegal strike.”As a result of this limitation, players are less likely to advance more than one base at a time. Finnish baseball has become a game for all sections of the population and, since the 1920s, has been incorporated into the physical education program in the public schools.Team games are concentrated mainly in population centers, but there are also good teams in sparsely populated areas, where the game is even more popular than soccer (association football).