If you thought falling into the stands while chasing down a foul ball was bad, you should pour one out for baseball players in Finland who might fall into a river.
Finnish baseball player flies headfirst into river while chasing ball
And you thought the warning track was intense ...
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
No, this isn’t faked — as much as you might want to believe it is. This clip comes to us from the “Superpesis,” the championship series of “Pesäpallo,” which is a Scandanavian variant of baseball. Playing in perhaps the worst conceived sporting arena ever, the Saarikenttä or “island stadium” is surrounded on four sides by a river, and can only be accessed by crossing a bridge.
This leads to a lot of unique moments, as one can imagine. Unlike baseball there’s no equivalent of a ground rule double in Pesäpallo, which means a ball hit into the river (which occurs fairly often) is still live. With players needing to wade through actual flowing water to get the ball and throw it back on the field it’s generally accepted that a river shot results in a home run. That doesn’t stop players throwing themselves into the water to get the ball, as this montage of iconic river shots from 2015 shows.
It’s unclear how deep the river is, but judging from most videos we’re talking a body of water that’s knee deep, at best. So when Teemu Nurmio dived head-first for the ball over the weekend there was a decent chance he could have been seriously injured by the plunge.
Thankfully he’s fine, with the translated tweet from Superpesis having absolutely no chill, saying, “Teemu Nurmio luckily survived the plunge.” One would think if you need to use the term “luckily survived” for something that happens multiple times a year in your sports league, then maybe you might re-think the stadium — but on the other hand, I need to see more river shots.
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