What Finland Can Teach America About Baseball – Wall Street Journal

Hyvinkää, Finland

The fastest-moving baseball game on earth is played almost 4,000 miles from the nearest major-league stadium. It hums along in rural towns so small that spectators sometimes outnumber local residents, on fields so far north that the only lighting required is the nighttime sun.

It is called pesäpallo, an obscure version of baseball that is little known outside the Finnish countryside. And for anyone who has ever grumbled about the plodding pace of play in North America, it offers something previously unimaginable: baseball without wasted time.

Tired of pitchers ambling around the mound? In Finland, there is no mound. Pitchers stand beside the hitter and toss the ball vertically over the plate.

Falling asleep waiting for the next batted ball? In Finland, hitters put nearly every pitch in play, sending fielders scampering in every direction. Players aren’t allowed to call for time between plays or pitches.

Seen enough late-inning pitching changes? In Finland, there are no relievers. The typical pitcher throws every inning of every game, all season long.

And those are only some of the quirks of a game that includes a zigzag base path, a rectangular outfield, trios of designated hitters called jokers and managers whose primary mode of communication resembles the feathers of a peacock.

“If you dropped acid and decided to go make baseball, this is what you would end up with,” said Andy Johnson, a Minnesota Twins scout based in Norway.

Jarring as it might look, pesäpallo is no mere curiosity in Finland. It is considered the national sport, and has been known to elicit uncharacteristic displays of emotion from the famously stoic Finns. Clapping, for instance, and speaking.

At a time when baseball is losing its grip on young people in other corners of the world, it is also a case study in how the sport’s traditional popularity can endure: with rules that foster constant motion and a deep reservoir of civic support. Plus, thumping electro-pop music between every pitch.

“If we were just standing around and moving too slow, people wouldn’t want to play,” said 18-year-old pitcher Ville-Veikko Olli, the reigning rookie of the year in the Finnish semipro league, Superpesis. “People wouldn’t want to watch it anymore.”

But standing around isn’t a phrase associated with baseball here. A few years ago, one player wore a pedometer during a game and was found to have run 10.5 kilometers from start to finish. By comparison, soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo averaged 9.6 kilometers covered during Champions League matches this year.

It is no coincidence that pesäpallo has remained widely popular among young people in Finland. Pesäpallo officials cited 2008 research showing it as the most popular school sport for girls and the second most popular for boys, behind ice hockey.

Whereas baseball loses many of the best American athletes to other sports, the Finnish version does the opposite. “Some people think pesäpallo is a cancer, because it takes the best athletes from other sports,” said Ossi Savolainen, head of the Finnish Baseball Association.

The speed of the game isn’t the only reason. Unlike American baseball, which has become too expensive for some families, the Finnish version has emerged as a cheaper alternative to hockey and soccer. From the top men’s and women’s divisions to small, rural youth teams, the entire sport is run like a nonprofit. It relies on a combination of local government funding and widespread volunteerism, from coaches to concessions workers.

“People don’t go to church here that much anymore, so it’s kind of the same thing—to have the community,” said Jussi Pyysalo, chief executive of Superpesis.

Finnish baseball is the brainchild of a former Olympic track and field star named Lauri Pihkala. According to historians, Pihkala was studying in the U.S. in 1907 when he attended an American baseball game in Boston and made an observation that was ahead of its time: Fascinating game. A bit slow, though.

He went on to develop the Finnish version in the 1920s, billing it as a military training exercise, but its popularity long outlasted wartime in Europe. It was a demonstration sport in the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki.

As part of its cultural museum, the University of Jyväskylä maintains an English-language glossary of Finnish baseball terms. It includes words such as cembalot, “a party caused by a victorious game,” and baseball, which the university defines as “the lukewarm version of pesäpallo.”

The differences between the two versions range from the visceral to the strategic. Instead of grass, fields are made of short-cropped artificial turf covered with a thin layer of sand. Instead of sitting in dugouts, players line the circle surrounding the home-plate area and heckle the opposing pitcher. Instead of trying to overpower hitters, pitchers must mix heights and locations to keep them off balance, with the only requirement being that they throw the ball at least one meter above their head. The manager gives signs to the hitter and base runners with a multicolored fan.

The ball has to land in fair territory to count for a hit, meaning the only home runs are of the inside-the-park variety. A triple counts as a home run. Teams use different strategies for where and how hard to hit the ball, depending on the situation, while fielders deploy a range of formations, depending on a hitter’s tendencies. The degree of movement from play to play evokes NFL defensive schemes more than Major League Baseball defensive shifts.

The game is also shorter. Last season, the average Superpesis game took 2 hours 18 minutes, 40 minutes shorter than the MLB average this season. For television purposes, the league wants games to be even shorter. “If we can fit everything in two hours, for people nowadays, that would be optimal,” Pyysalo said.

Finland has produced only one MLB player, a pitcher named John Michaelson who appeared in two games for the Chicago White Sox in 1921. But at least one team is beginning to wonder if the popularity of the sport here can make it more of a breeding ground.

Troy Williams, a New York Yankees scout based in Germany, made local headlines last month when he attended Finnish baseball’s annual All-Star weekend in Hyvinkää, a northern suburb of Helsinki. It was the first visit by an MLB scout that Finnish officials could recall.

During the three-day event, Yankees, Cubs, Red Sox and other MLB caps dotted the stands. A crowd of nearly 5,000 people did the wave.

While the hitting style here is likely incompatible with American baseball, Williams said he could envision position players with strong arms being converted into pitchers. During his visit, he clocked four players throwing harder than 90 mph.

“This is, to me, the hotbed of talent in Europe,” Williams said. “It’s almost like the Cuba of Europe.”

But one of the players who caught Williams’s eye said he had no desire to pursue a career in American baseball. And as much as they prefer their version, pesäpallo officials aren’t looking for other countries to adopt it.

“We don’t have any idea to make this an international sport,” Savolainen said. “This is a sport for Finns.”

Write to Brian Costa at brian.costa@wsj.com