Pesäpallo (Finnish pronunciation:[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 brännboll, rounders, baseball and lapta.
Pesäpallo was a demonstration sport at the 1952 Summer Olympics, held in Helsinki, Finland.
The team playing the defensive half has nine players in the field. The pitcher is positioned in the home base. A catcher plays in the infield on the side of the second base (NOT wearing the same equipment as the catcher in baseball. Each of the three bases has its baseman and an additional two shortstopps playing close to the second and third bases. Two outfielders cover the outfield.
Fast runners are usually positioned in the front of the batting order, after which a player who specializes in switching players (called runners) between bases. After that comes a player specializing in scoring runners home. The jokers are a batting joker (specializes in force play scoring (all bases have runners)), a switching joker (specializes in switching runners between bases), and a runner joker (specializes in advancing in the field). In practise many teams often have two batting jokers and one runner joker, or vice versa. In these batting orders the switching jokers are effectively omitted.
The game is overseen by an Umpire-in-chief who is assisted by a plate umpire, a 2nd base umpire, 3rd base umpire, and a Backline umpire.
A team is formed by up to two managers and up to 12 players. Nine players are allowed to be fielders in a single defensive inning. In a single offensive inning 9 players can participate in batting and 3 work as jokers. During an offensive inning a team can use each of the 3 jokers once in a batting round.
If, after two periods, the game is at draw, a super inning is played. If the game is still at draw after the super inning, a scoring contest is used to resolve the game. In this a runner is positioned at the 3rd base and a batter tries to score the runner.
Helmets are not used in the school or in informal settings.
The ball is caught into the glove's cup between the thumb and the index finger. Sometimes, however, the ball hits the palm and a properly designed glove can prevent injuries.
The biggest differences between bats lie in the weight, center of gravity, flexibility and length. The maximum length of the bat is 100 centimeters. When using a children's ball the maximum length of the bat is 90 centimeters.
There are only a few manufacturers producing spikes designed for pesäpallo and many players use normal running spikes. Some shoes have also spikes at the heel but mostly spikes are positioned under the ball of the foot. Usually there are seven spikes in a shoe and they are 3–15millimeters long. When playing on artificial turf the maximum length of spikes is 6millimeters.
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