Superpesis roundup

Left - Kankaanpään Maila, Centre - Kempeleen Kiri, Right - Kiteen Pallo -90 In this post I look at 3 more teams and will cover more teams later on in the series. In this post I will be talking about: Kankaanpään Maila; Kempeleen Kiri; and  Kiteen Pallo -90. Kankaanpään Maila Home town/location: Kankaanpää is a small town and municipality located in the Satakunta region. Despite having evidence of settlement in the area from the Stone Age, Kankaanpää only officially became a township in 1967 and a Town in 1972. The population of Kankaanpää is 11,464 (as at 31st January 2019). Despite it’s small size, Kankaanpää boasts an impressive array of schools, in particular geared towards the armed forces. This goes hand in hand with the near by Pohjankangas Training Area, which is capable of housing main battle tanks used by the US Marine Corps. The climate of the region is such that it is one of the rainiest in Finland, with 616mm of rainfall per year on average.  ...

The Itä v Länsi game will not be held in Pori this July Photograph from Itä-Länsi Facebook The big stories Itä v Länsi (East v West) game postponed until 2021 The news broke last week that the East v West game scheduled for 3-4th July 2020 in Pori has been cancelled. The Pesäpalloliito (Pesäpallo governing body) announced whilst I was writing this post that the games will be rescheduled for 2021 instead.  It is such a shame that Pori will not host this year’s equivalent of the all-star game, but i am pleased that they will be able to host it in 2021. Finnish Government’s rules on gatherings and the impact on the season The Finnish national government has outlined steps to lift the ban on the “10 person maximum” for gatherings and increase it back to 500; however this step will not be taken anytime soon and as a result, the Superpesis season has now been postponed again to no earlier than 1st July 2020. The prospect of a total lockout for 2020 remains an option,...

Left - Hyvinkään Tahko, Centre - IPV, Right - Joensuun Maila Part 2 In this post I look at the first 3 teams alphabetically and will cover more teams later on in the series. In this post I will be talking about: Hyvinkään Tahko; Imatran Pallo-Veikot; and Joensuun Maila. Hyvinkään Tahko Home town/location: Hyvinkää is is a town and municipality located in the Uusimaa region, approximately 50 kilometres (30 mi) north of Helsinki. The population of Hyvinkää is 46,537 (as at 31st January 2019). Hyvinkää is also home to Konecranes, which specialises in the manufacture and service of cranes, and KONE Elevators, the world's third-largest elevator company who manufacture, install and service elevators and escalators. Besides pesäpallo, Hyvinkää is known among Scandinavian golf enthusiasts due to Kytäjä golf courses. Team History: Tahko were founded in 1915, making them one of the oldest and original teams in pesäpallo (which predates the official creation of the ...

For the first time there is now a podcast about Pesäpallo in English The podcast is here! What started out as a throw away comment between English speaking pesäpallo fans has become the first ever pesis podcast in the English language. Until now most of the coverage of pesäpallo in English has been limited to “the same article in US media” once a year and those occasional videos that try and explain a fraction of what this sport is. Having said that of course, the 1 year anniversary of this blog is rapidly approaching, with over 100 posts published and close to 2000 views, but other than that, the pesis world has been almost exclusively in Finnish. What is this podcast? If you follow this blog regularly, the podcast will actually be quite familiar to you anyway, but in short there are 3 main aims for the podcast: Spread the word and gain popularity for pesäpallo beyond Finland; To give insight and analysis on the game generally; and To bring the latest news and analysi...

History is made as the first ever English language pesäpallo podcast is published The big stories Sasu Toikka of KPL reaches a very different semi-final during the Coronavirus lockout With no pesis being played, in particular the much anticipated KPL v PattU semi-final in this year’s Halli-SM, it came as quite a surprise to many to see KPL’s Sasu Toikka reach a semi-final that could actually take place. In Ice Hockey, the season ended abruptly without a champion being crowned. Instead, the teams decided to settle matters by way of ePlayoffs using the NHL 20 console game. With each team being able to chose their players freely, KooKoo (Kouvola’s hockey team) saw the opportunity to draft Sasu for their playoff run. The ePlayoffs allow fans to get some form of closure on what has been a very exciting season. The rounds will be single elimination games, culminating in the final on 25th April 2020. Sasu’s quarter-final was held on 11th April 2020 and KooKoo won their game...

So many teams to choose from. Which one is right for you? Supporting a team from afar   I have been supporting teams far away from where I live all my life - as a life long Dundee United (football/soccer) supporter growing up in Cheshire in the UK, the distance was not insurmountable, but still meant that as a child i could not attend any live games. As I started following other sports I started to try and root for new teams, the only trouble was that I had no idea who to support or why. My first experience in looking for a team to support came when I discovered baseball in 2002. Every week there was a late evening game from the US which was broadcast in the early hours of the morning here in the UK. This led to me experiencing various teams and players with commentary in English. After some deliberation I chose the St Louis Cardinals as my chosen team and have been a fond supporter for 18 years (I even had tickets to see them in London this year until it was cancelled d...