Today was the Finnish baseball event of the Get FINternational course. I was really looking forward to it, because I´m a big fan of sports that include balls… doesn´t mean that I´m good at them but I always have fun playing. Steffi and I arrived at the outdoor location across from Lemmenkäisenkatu campus and met the two trainers. They told us the basic rules of Finnish baseball and two of the biggest differences to regular baseball is that the Pitcher, who usually stands in the middle of the field and throws the ball towards the batter, who then hits the ball with the bat and tries to hit it as far away as possible, the Finnish version is that the pitcher is at the same position as the batter and they stand vis-á-vis from each other and the pitcher throws the ball vertical in the air, steps back and the batter hits it. The other thing majorly different is the field, in regular baseball the field is a square and in Finnish baseball it´s kind of a weird shape (picture). After they finished explaining, we started with practice. We were teams of 5 and each team member was allowed to try out each position. When I was Batter, I hit the ball 2 out of 5 times, which I thought was pretty good for a first try… one time the ball actually flew quite far, further than I expected! Unfortunately, just a few throws as a Pitcher in, I heard a scream of pain from behind and when I turned around, I saw Steffi holding her arm. She had an accident with the bat. She told me later that she was Pitcher at that time and she threw the ball in the air but thought it wasn´t a good one and tried to catch the ball again but the Batter already swung the bat and instead of the ball he hit her underarm. The trainer immediately brought a cooling pack for her arm and opened up the locker rooms for Steffi to lay down in. The guy and me stayed with her the rest of the game. He felt really guilty even though it wasn´t his fault, Steffi tried to tell him that, but I think he still felt really guilty. She felt better after a few minutes and was able to make jokes again. There was one good thing to all the bad… we didn’t have to play outside in the pouring rain and stayed inside, where it was warm and dry.
