The Rules of Pesäpallo (Finnish Baseball) - EXPLAINED! 

Ninh explains the Rules of Pesäpallo - Finland’s national version of Baseball. Boy this wasn’t an easy one to make! But special thanks to Tony Jones @ The Finnish Baseball & Softball Federation for double checking this video for me and helping me with corrections. After watching hours of Pesäpallo to understand the rules - I must admit that it’s actually a brilliant game! There is A LOT of strategy involved in this game, even more than American Baseball - I think it could catch on if the circumstances were right. Like, Share and Subscribe :)

Americans: “The rules of baseball are so confusing!” Finland: “Hold my alcoholic curdled milk.”

Anyone notice the example line-up explaining what caught was? All famous Finnish NHL players!

As a Finn this was very well made. Thank you! Now I can explain my non-Finn friends the rules of our game.

I play Finnish Baseball and I'm from Finland. I've been looking for this kind of explaining video so I could tell my friends from other countries about the game I play. So thank you for this video!

Finland: Hey, can I copy your homework? America: Sure, just change it so it's not so obvious Finland: No problem!

Looks like Pesäpallo is about just putting the ball in play and letting the fielders compete against the base runners. While baseball is more about the duel between pitchers and batters.

To me, this sounds like a group of Finns visited the United States and attended an American baseball game some years ago. On their trip home, they stopped in the UK for a bit and attended a cricket game and spent the evening pup-hopping and talking about the rules of both games. Then, for the next leg of their journey, they sailed on to Amsterdam and got together for a few beers smoked a bunch of weed, then flew home to Finland and tried describing American baseball and UK cricket to their *other* Finnish friends, again over a few beers -- and THIS is what they all came up with.

The other feature that's worth mentioning is that if you hit a ball in the area of play and it bounces out, there is no "out-of-bounds" area....the defense has to go get the ball if it goes into the stands, a river, etc.

As a baseball fan, I must say that Pesapällo looks fascinating! Would love to play this sport someday.

As a Finnish person and a person who was in a small local pesäpallo team this video makes me Happy

The most amazing thing about this sport has to be the constant chest-first diving onto a hard surface. That looks so painful to non-players!

Utterly floored. Finns you beat the swedes fought the soviets twice, invented rally in battered cars, are some of the hardest drinkers, fanatic skiers, icehockey players, prettiest blondes and now i discover that you managed to take baseball hostage mutulate it beyond recognition and passed it as your own... a bit scared.

i moved to Finland when i was young, and we did alot of finnish baseball in school, having played it many times, the rules were always generally quite clear to me.

Hearing In The Shadows by The Rasmus immediately made me smile. I was such a huge fan of the band when I was younger!

Thanks Ninh for showing me sports I never had a clue existed!

lol, this is WILD!! As an American that grew up watching and playing baseball I can definitely see the influence ( how can you not?!), but it's also completely unique as well. I'm going to add this to my bucket list for when I visit Finland.. I *have* to attend a game!

Thanks for this video. As Finnish pesäpallo enthusiast, I say that this is one of the best explaining video for our national sport .

i'm a big fan of baseball, and i want nothing more than to watch this sport live about a million times!

Really nicely explained rules. Pesäpallo is fast paced and the strategy plays a big role in the game.

Pesapallo resembles 19th century baseball in America, sort of like a Finnish person saw the game played circa 1875 and then returned to Finland and tried to explain the game without having prepared notes. This game is more entertaining than 21st century Major League Baseball.

I came here from a Finnish lesson in Instagram where I found in a list of sports the Pesäpallo or Finnish baseball. It's a complete discovery for me.

I wonder how many decades it will take for this sport to take over. Because it's amazing. So much more exciting than normal baseball.

It really gets interesting when the bases are full. It's actually advantageous for the defense as outs can be made anywhere and the batter has to run at some point. Bases loaded and 2 strikes? Runners have to take off(at least the guy on 3rd I believe). The defense will often drop line drives and flyballs to put runners on to load the bases. A lot of the offensive strategy involves moving runners around without clogging up the bases.

Ive been trying to tell my fellow New Zealanders about this for over 30 years. Now I can SHOW them. Thanks.

The guys at MLB Network once played vitilla with Pedro Martinez. I'd like to see them try to play this. Gotta say, as an American, it looks pretty neat! Thanks to Jomboy for introducing me to this! Though judging by the field dimensions, you'd think that Finn had seen a game not in Boston, but at the Polo Grounds...

just read an article with my kids at school. This is super interesting sport and thank you for the explanation. very well done

I really like this baseball. Seems like a VERY active sport that involves even more running around since you've got less players. I understand the field is smaller, but it just seems very high powered.

Cheers Finland. You've combined Baseball with Cricket and made a sport no one can understand.

This has to be one of your best videos! I've seen other stuff on pesäpallo but the only differences you could distinguish between it and American baseball were the shape of the field and the style of pitching. I had no clue the difference between the two was so vast. Keep up the good work!

Leave it to the Finns to take our national sport and make it as complicated as possible! Just like they did with heavy metal! 😊 Surely, I mean that in good spirits. I love Finland!

Talk about crazy. I thought IKEA assembly instructions were complicated.

One cool fact that I did not notice you mentioning, is that pesäpallo was originally developed to train Finnish men for war. Throwing the ball resembles throwing a grenade and diving to a base (in a Finnish way) will save your life when you are running from artillery fire for example. Pesäpallo was very popular in White Finland's Civil guards, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, but that connection has since been severed. Great video altogether!

Was actualy going to ask you about doing a video on Pesäpallo. Had to explain it many times to people around that not familiar with it. Well done on explaining it. I will add a rare way to get someone out. As a fielder if you have the possession of the ball and any part of your body touches the line (that goes from base to base) and a runner is trying to go to the next base he is out. The fielder must be between the base and a runner trying to advance to the next base. I think I have only seen this like 5 times in my livetime... And before the game starts you have the Hutunkeitto. Where the two captains compete. The referee will throw a bat (grib side of the bat upwards) to to the one of them who will catch it and hold a grib on the bat. The other captain will take grab the bat above the other captains hand and and hold it there. Repeat upwards to the end off the bat untill either one can/can not hold the bat. Winning captain will choose on will they field or bat 1st.

Jomboy media anyone?

If you want to compare it to baseball: It's much much easier to hit, but there are more limitations. So it's all about how and where you hit. This means there's a lot of tactics going on for both sides. Pitchers role in finnish baseball is slightly smaller, but he's still clearly the most important player on the outfield: He can pitch the ball to certain side of the plate, try different pitching heights throw foul balls and try different tempos to throw enemy batters off balance. Typical finnish baseball game lasts for 2-3h and there's a lot more things happen in it than in typical 3-4h american baseball game. On professional (or in this case semi professional) level this game is really complex and it's really hard to get in to the game for a first timers. On amateur level this game is a really big fun: After few practice swings people will start to hit the ball..and that's enough for entertaining play on this level.

Finish baseball to American baseball seems like American football to rugby. Sure they both use a similar shaped ball, and share a lot of elements, but if you tweek the rules enough the games play completely differently

Yes! Thank you for making this video! I've been waiting for some sort of Finnish Baseball tutorial!

as a finnish person myself and someone who has played finnish baseball for 10 years you explained there rules pretty well you did good research nice one ninh

To clarify: Baseball was not the only source for Lauri "Tahko" Pihkala when developing pesäpallo. There already was traditional batting games played in Finland, which often had this vertical pitch for example. Pesäpallo consists of: - some ideas from baseball - some ideas from traditional finnish games - some of Pihkala's original ideas.

Too happy for this explanation! I knew it was coming, I believe some of us requested it a while ago, thanks for helping further explain and even introduce sports to your following. This sport is artistically absurd.

This was a good video and explained rules very clearly:) I’m from Finland and I was in California years 1994-95. I was during my stay there watching few Oakland A’s games. It was a fun and I also liked it because there was so many spectators.

This is like the Finnish take on baseball with an emphasis on RUNNING. Not a bad idea in that respect. Overall interesting.

thank you for making this! I have always been confused by this sport and now I am no longer! thank you!

Thank for telling to world that awesome sport. I'm from Finland.

I have never heard of this game before. But your videos are always a learning experience to some new things to peak my interest. Good job once again.

Thanks Ninh! Glad you covered this one!

Their head first sliding skills are insane!

i played a lot of Pesäpallo or "pesis" as a kid in school and enjoyed it so much! its a great sport that is unfortunately very small on an international level. I loved to play as the lukkari or the pitcher as it is in English. i loved to be the strategist and the center of attention :D

Great video as always, Ninh! I knew nothing about Pesäpallo before, but it looks fantastic! Amazingly, it looks like my country, Australia, has one of the sport's best national teams!

I ❤ 🇫🇮 Pesäpallo 🥎! Peter from Switzerland

OMG. Finnish Vodka has produced an incredible game!

Fascinating! I had never heard of this sport! Thank you for all of your hard work producing this video!

Live near Finland. Next time I visit I will have to catch a game. Looks Sweet!

now i finally understand the rules of my national sport... at least partly, never understood the part of being cauhgt vs. out. But it was my favorite sport at school (perhabs because i could bat and throw well and far). on ninth grade we used to have teachers vs pupils match at the end of the term.

The rasmus song just made this video so much better👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 love your videos

This looks fun. Great video

Nice video. Like the choice of The Rasmus as backing track.

Very good to learn more about this game

Never knew this existed - very cool. Thanks for the vid!

This is a strategy game, something like the very early days of baseball when the pitcher's job was to give the batter something to hit and the power game hadn't developed.

Pesäpallo was originally created for military training It taught people how to throw grenades and how to dive for cover

Well done you explained correctly and simply

This is such a cool sport! I would love to play it one day

This is actually super cool! And this is coming from an American who has never really cared for baseball ;-)

🇫🇮🇫🇮🇫🇮 Nice video! Greetings from Finland!

Loving your Videos. Expecting more

As an American-baseball player, I totally want to try this sport out! It legit looks fun!

This is awesome! I never knew this was a sport!

Whack-bat requires at least thirteen players, consisting of three grabbers, three taggers, five twig-runners, one center tagger, and the player at whack-bat. The center tagger lights a pinecone on fire and throws it to the player at whack-bat. The player hits the pinecone and runs to knock a cedar stick off the cross rods. Then the twig-runners dash back and forth until the pine cone burns out and the umpire calls "Hotbox." Finally, the score down are added up, then divided by nine.

Nice touch using the Rasmus as the instrumental music here!

Thank you for such a clear , concise explanation of this game. You are right, it is a completely different sport than baseball although there are some similarities.

I like how if you put it play you can choose not to run and instead try to hit a better one. Think how different baseball would be if such a rule existed!

congrats you have made the most famous video about this sport

Another great video! Thanks!

Thank you very much for making this sport! That I suggested.

Just came home from a game and randomly saw this in my feed, which is a funny coincidence. It's a great video, I think it explains the game quite well. Many thanks for doing what the pesäpallo foundation should have done a long time ago!

Yay! Even though I thought you wouldn't make a video on Pesäpallo, I am happy to see you did! Where did you find photage of this sport. Do to its (rather unfortunate) unpopularity it is kinda hard to find video (On RU-vid). Pesäpallo honestly looks much more fast paced and exciting than Baseball.

This is crazy I love it

The cool thing I like about this is the fact that there are adult female teams (unlike softball here in America). Just seems like there is so much restriction for females to be competitive in my country. Now while the rules are indeed a bit confusing, it seems like its more friendly and not about trying to go crazy with blasting balls out of the field.

Liked for using the Rasmus

Do you consider auto racing a sport? If so, I would love for you to cover the rules of the different auto racing series/sanctioning bodies from around the world (F1, NASCAR, IndyCar, WTCC, DTM, V8 Supercars, WEC, WRC)

Massively helpful after seeing an instagram reel and needing to know more. Cheers

Another good video. It also kind reminds me of another baseball-derived game, Rounders.

That looks like a lot of fun

Pesäpallo Seems Like An AWESOME Sport! SUPER SUOMI 😃😃

This is absolute madness I say! 🤯

I just subscribed to your channel cause it’s cool and you have exposed me to all the sports that are pretty cool

As a 15 year baseball player, BRING THIS TO AMERICA PLEASE

Pretty good video to get the basic idea, but obviously a total stranger to the game would need at least one full inning to see what is actually happening. Btw, there are complete games of Finnish top league (Superpesis) in RU-vid! The main difference is that all Superpesis players make contact with the ball 99,5% of the time. So there are no strikeouts - all 3 outs usually come in tight races to a base between runner and a guy throwing the ball to baseman. And since everyone is able to clear the bases without forcing an out (a 'caught' , as mentioned), and percentage to get a "MLB-hit" is FAR more than .30 - .35, which would be pretty great at MLB. So therefore, more runners, more hitters, less strikeouts, more strategy involved. A very fun sport to watch!

Kipper cameo! Best Flames goalie to date. 🧡 Thanks for the knowledge!

Thank you for doing the video of Pesäpallo! Go the Melbourne storms ! cant get league out of my mind.

So between Hydraulic press channel, dudesons, and sons of explosions. And now this I am convinced Finland is completely tucking cool and I need to move there.

This reminds me of the video Jiskefet english sports

As a second generation Finnish-American, I was delighted to watch this video. Had no idea it existed. SISU

Very good Informative

liked your Line-up list. retired NHL stars :)

Thank god for this so i don't need to try and explain this to my american friends :D

I love how you used Finnish hockey legends as the example names!

I'd love to see you do a video of the Romanian bat and ball game called Oină. Or ski archery. Great work.