Welcome to TonySPN, a semi-regular series in which Content Creator and Resident Sports Aficionado Tony takes you through the obscurities and amusing oddities in the world of sports. Don’t worry, “No More Sports Questions!” folks, we’ll make this fun.

In one of my lines of work, I run into several international sports that no one in the bar should ever be expected to know about. But sometimes I learn about something that I absolutely must tell you about, and Pesäpallo is one of those things.

Pesäpallo is the National Sport of Finland, and perhaps surprisingly, it is based on baseball. How good is it? Let’s put it this way: Before Pesäpallo was invented in the 1920s, only one Finland-born player ever played Major League Baseball. That would be John Michaelson, who threw 2.2 innings in 1921 for the Chicago White Sox and gave up three runs.

After Pesäpallo took Finland by storm, exactly zero Finland-born players made the MLB. There was no need to. Pesäpallo was just that good. And it’s easy to see why, as it fixes the most fundamental flaw in baseball.

You see, if you spend years watching baseball, you may just realize one day that you understand it. Someone will say “Infield Fly Rule” and you’ll immediately recite Rule 5.09 of the Official Baseball Rules to yourself. Suddenly, you start having strong opinions on the rules MLB dropped yesterday. At that point, congratulations. You are no longer a normal person.

That’s not as much of a risk in Pesäpallo, which means you can enjoy it without ever having to worry about devoting a large section of your brain to knowing who Jeff Francoeur is. You’ll be far too busy trying, and failing, to figure out where every hitter is running to, and why.

Trust us, we’re not exaggerating, or making a cheap dunk on Finland. In baseball, there’s a diamond that runners run counter-clockwise around. It’s one of the few things in baseball that’s simple and intuitive. Here’s where the bases are in Pesäpallo.

Instead of running around a diamond, you zig-zag around the shape of a goose’s head. There’s a pretty cool side effect of this – it makes the trip to the bases progressively longer, which is a cool idea. But still, couldn’t that be accomplished with an easier-to-digest shape? Or is the goose shape where the name Pesäpallo (“nest ball” in Finnish) comes from? Do geese even have nests? I’m very confused!

One way that Finland gets the game extremely right is they break baseball down into two digestible periods. These are four innings long each, as opposed to one nine-inning game. It doesn’t matter how much or little you win a period by, it either ends 1-0, or 0-1. Then the opposing team gets a chance to tie it in the second period.

What happens if the teams tie? They’ve solved that, too. Baseball tried to solve their propensity for long, endless tie games by putting a runner on second in every inning. Pesäpallo stomps all over this silliness with a tiebreaking inning, then a quick scoring contest. You can watch a full Pesäpallo game without going to bed at 2am, which is great. And if you live in the Midwest United States, it’s even better, because the games start much earlier than 7pm Central Time.

That’s not all Pesäpallo does well. They’ve also staved off automation. The pitcher doesn’t throw from several feet away, as they do in baseball. Instead, they have the pitcher stand by home plate and throw up a jump ball for the batters to hit. One has to assume Tee-ball technology has reached Finland, so it’s a conscious choice to have that job filled by a person who is (presumably) paid, rather than a device. Baseball owners would never.

Another thing baseball would never do: introduce aquatics into the game. Baseball hates moisture. If it rains, game over. If the ball goes into the San Francisco Bay, it’s unplayable. Not in Finland. If the ball goes into the river, you’ve got to fish it out and play the ball. And this happens enough that teams bordering rivers have cameras on them. Here’s five minutes of proof.

We’ll wrap this up with a couple more Pesäpallo rules that are excellent, no notes:

When a team’s at bat, the rest of the team stands behind the batter in a semi-circle. Incredible. Way to be supportive.

Each team gets three “Jokers” that they can insert in the batting order anywhere they want. I guess baseball has that with the pinch-hitter, but calling them “Jokers” is way cooler.

Triples count as home runs. This is how it should be in MLB, as well, as triples are very fun and much rarer than home runs.

What should you do with this information? Whatever you’d like. You can break into Finnish cinema by pitching the Pesäpallo re-make of “The Sandlot” to Helsinki’s best-connected film executives. Or you can start a local Pesäpallo pick-up league. Give me a call. I’ll gladly explain the pieces of rules that I know to your friends, then operate the River Cam.