Sotkamo return to gold standard in Finnish-rules baseball

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Pesäpallo, or Finnish-rules baseball, is the traditional summer sport in this country, with attendances in some rural communities actually outstripping the numbers who turn out in the larger cities to watch football.
      The pesäpallo season reached a climax at the weekend in one small northern town, with the fourth match in the best of five play-offs between Sotkamo Jymy and Kouvola Pallonlyöjät.
     
To describe Sotkamo, just east of Kajaani, as a small town is both polite and grossly misleading. Sotkamo has a population of around 10,000, but they are spread over around 3,000 square kilometres, one tenth of which is water. Densely populated it isn't.
      At the same time, the place is a veritable pesäpallo Mecca, with ten championship medals won and nine appearances in the final of the play-offs during the past decade.
     
Still, Jymy had something to prove this year, as they had gone a whole two seasons without actually lifting the coveted Superpesis trophy.
      Last season they were beaten by Pattijoki after leading 2-1 in games and coming within minutes of wrapping up the title.
      They made no such mistakes at home this time in the fourth match of the series against Kouvola, winning the game in exhibition fashion 2-0 to spark off riotous celebrations, with the players dunking themselves and the trophy in nearby Sapsojärvi.
      Nearly 4,000 people turned up to watch the local heroes return Sotkamo to the gold standard.
     
It was disappointment for Kouvola, who had invested heavily in players for this season, but their mood was brightened somewhat by the fact that this was their first championship medal for 32 years, and the team has enjoyed strong support of late.
      Saturday's third match, played in Kouvola, was attended by a club record of 5,615 spectators.
     
While ice hockey in Finland, now just embarking on a new season, is rife with rumours of clubs in financial difficulties and losing money, Finnish-rules baseball is looking healthier than it has for some time.
      The sport was battered a few years back by a match-fixing scandal that scared away sponsors and annoyed spectators, but now the crowds are coming back, and Sotkamo Jymy for instance recorded their sixth successive year in the black.
     


Links:
  Superpesis, the top Finnish pesäpallo league (Wikipedia)
  Finnish-rules Baseball Association: A Introduction to the Game
  Pesäpallo, or Finnish-rules baseball (Wikipedia)

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