Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Finnish baseball

Yes, I am being boring and watching TV. I went out for another walk during a lull in the rain, down to Turku Castle, which was a tad further away than I thought. Anyway, it was about an 8km round trip and my feet are sore and I'm wet and cold and watching TV.

The TV channels at this hotel are all local, and I'm watching this bizarre version of baseball, which I have just googled, and it's called pesapallo, or Finnish baseball.

The pitcher stands right next to the plate and throws the ball straight up in the air, and the batter walks in and whacks it. And instead of a diamond, the runners run in a zig-zag.

As most of you know, I have two sport lists - sports I'm good at and sports I suck at. The first list currently has no entries, but I'm watching this thinking that I could probably throw a ball straight up in the air, so perhaps my sporting calling is to be a pesapallo pitcher! Then again, maybe I'd be better as a pesapallo catcher (because there isn't one...)

Wikipedia says this sport is played in Australia... never seen or heard of it before in my life, although we did come fourth in the 2006 Pesapallo World Cup (out of four competing nations!)

Might have to see if I can find a live match somewhere!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

the zig zag running... that is weird... i have never heard of this game EVER