I traveled to Vimpeli, Finland for pesäpallo playoff game. Vimpeli, who are two years removed from back-to-back Finnish championships were taking on the defending champs from Joensuu, about 4.5 hours to the east. As this was the third game of the best-of-five series, tensions at Saarikenttä — Vimpeli’s home ballpark — were high.

Because Saarikennta is built on an island, it produces unparalleled drama when the ball gets hit into the creek, where it’s still considered in play.

A few years ago, I first wrote about my Finnish baseball story. Over the years, it’s evolved from something I’d talk about at parties, to something my friends tell strangers when I first meet them. It usually leads to rabbit hole of follow-up questions:

“Wait, they play baseball in Finland?”

“Why are all the bases in the wrong direction?”

“How did you find it?” “This is crazy!?”

I’d been watching Pesäpallo off and on for almost a decade. Even before I wrote about it, I’d learned about this odd Finnish variant of our national pastime and found myself transfixed.

Until a few years ago, it was still quite difficult to get any information about the game in English. It’s still not the easiest sport to follow from abroad if you’re not a Finnish speaker, but social media — specifically the Superpesis (Finnish MLB) embrace of it — has improved things dramatically.

So what’s a Finnish baseball game like? Well it’s faster-paced than our baseball, but it’s not speedier at all. Games are divided into two 4-inning double headers. If you win both, the match is over. If you split the series, there’s a 9th inning tiebreaker. If you’re still tied, there’s a “penalty-kicks” style scoring contest where pairs of 5 batter-runner groups attempt to score a run to break the tie. (Needless to say, I never felt more America in finding this part of the game a really unsatisfying way to end a long contest)