Bill Littlefield, at Only a Game on WBUR radio, got a lesson in the subtleties of Finnish baseball when he interviewed the Wall Street Journal’s Brian Costa recently. Costa went to Finland to report on pesäpallo, a game whose players are sometimes scouted by US baseball teams.
“Brian Costa: The biggest difference is the pitcher, instead of throwing the ball from a mound at the batter, stands beside him and throws it up in the air and sort of gets out of the way. But there are base paths, there’s four bases, there’s home plate, players field with gloves. …
“Bill Littlefield: Critics of baseball in the U.S. say the games are too long. It’s too slow. There’s not enough action. Would such critics be happier with pesäpallo?
“Brian: Oh, they would love pesäpallo. There are very, very few strikeouts, very few swings and misses, so pretty much every ball that gets pitched gets put into play. …
“Bill: What’s it like for fans attending a game of pesäpallo? And how many are there? Is this a big popular attraction?
“Brian: This is really not a city sport, so [in] Helsinki, you won’t see that much of it. But it is the sport of the Finnish countryside. You’ll have towns where the local population may be 3,000 people, and they’ll get 3,500 at a game. …
“Bill: You note that a scout from the New York Yankees was in Finland last month for All-Star weekend there. … [But] Finnish players, I gather, do not seem very interested in playing baseball as we know it?
“Brian: No they’re not. It’s very interesting. … None of them seemed to really follow Major League Baseball. The people who I asked about their impressions of it kind of smirked or winced or just said, ‘eh.’ I mean, they feel like they’ve got a better version of it.”
Video: PattijoenUrheilijat
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