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Pesapallo, or Finnish Baseball: An Old Tradition in a New Form
| Article
# : |
19894 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1992 |
3,749 Words |
| Author
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Jukko Aarnio
Jukko Aarnio is editor of Pesapallo magazine. He played
pesapallo in school and in Finland's minor leagues before
beginning public relations work for the Finnish Baseball
Association. |
Finland's national game, pesapallo, is a combination of old Finnish and European games played with bat and ball and of a modern competitive sport developed in Finland in 1922. Pesapallo is a direct translation of the American word baseball: Pesa is Finnish for base and pallo for ball. Pesapallo is Finland's most popular summer spectator sport and is played by everyone everywhere--by corporate teams and local street groups, in stadiums and local school playgrounds.
Pesapallo has a colorful background. Finnish, old European, and Scandinavian ball games contributed to its formation, as did the ideas of the late professor Lauri Pihkala, who was heavily influenced by American baseball.
Team games and recreational sports were very popular in Finland in the nineteenth century. Finnish kuningaspallo (kingball), Russian lapta, German Schlag-ball, and Swedish langboll were similar ball games and big favorites of that era.
The older team sports retained their popularity in Finland longer than elsewhere in Europe. Even in the 1920s, Finnish children still learned to play the games their parents and grandparents had enjoyed. Modern competitive sports gained a foothold in Finland relatively slowly.
Developing pesapallo into a modern game called for conscious efforts to transform the old games into one that would meet the needs of a twentieth-century society. This modern game would be played under uniform rules, with a clear scoring system and a championship team in each division level nationwide.
Pihkala, the modernizer of pesapallo, was a leader in competitive Finnish sports, inventor, journalist, and philosopher. He influenced sports on all levels in Finland. He realized at the beginning of the twentieth century, when Finland's independence was still a decade away, that a sport based solely on togetherness would not survive in a society that was becoming competition oriented.
Pihkala thought that Finns needed their own game, a national game that would unite the different parts of the country when played under uniform rules. This sense of nationalism was linked to Finland's struggle for national and cultural existence under Russian rule, and it would help Finns unite, despite the division of social classes caused by industrialization. Education and public health-related purposes were aligned with the new
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