Sunday, May 24, 2009

Pespallo

Pesäpallo [pesæpɑlːo] (Swedish: Boboll, also referred to as "Finnish baseball") is a fast-moving ball sport that's quite often referred to as the national sport of Finland and has some presence in other countries, such as Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, and Northern Ontario in Canada (Both Canada and Australia have high Finnish and Scandinavian populations). The game is similar to bran boll, rounders, baseball and lapta.

Pesäpallo was developed and refined by Lauri "Tahko" Pihkala, who based it on baseball and some local games, around 1910–1920. The rules have remained the same since, aside from some fine-tuning in the 1990s by the Pesäpalloliitto, the governing pesäpallo federation in Finland. The basic structure of the game is identical to baseball's.

The first bounce of the ball is decisive: It must bounce within the play area, and may then roll over a line and still be in play. The back line on the fly counts as a [strike/foul ball]. The foul lines are also on the sides and the front of the field. So if a player hits a very hard hit that would be a certain home run in baseball, it's counted as a strike/foul in pesäpallo.

A batting team's batting inning ends not when three batters have failed to score, but when either three batters have all been physically beaten by the ball (a ball catch straight off the bat does not suffice, it is called 'koppi' a middle ground between scoring and being out) .when the entire regular team of nine has batted and are all either in koppi, out on a base or run-out (but if a player scores, he liberates all his koppi players, making them eligible to bat again in that inning)
The batting pitch consists of a wicket 20 yards long, at each end of which are placed 2 (not 3) stumps slightly less than one balls width apart. There are no boundaries on the fielding area, and fielders may stand anywhere they wish, althoug the most common arrangements are a variation on cricket fielding positions. The game is played between two teams, usually of 11, although at Lee Abbey (see below) teams are of unlimited size.

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