Brännboll!

This weekend is Umeå’s (in)famous Brännbollscupen.

What’s Brännboll, you say?

Well, it’s kind of like baseball. a very socialist type of baseball… everyone plays, everyone participates...

but the bases form a square around you, so you actually bat halfway between ‘first’ and ‘home’... and there is only one inning... and there’s no pitcher.

So how do you hit the ball?

You pitch it to yourself. But it’s a tennis ball not a baseball...and the bat is like a baseball bat, but lighter and smaller. Or sometimes it’s a flat paddle if you are a bad hitter. But it actually doesn’t matter if you are a bad hitter because you don't strike out, you just get to go to 'first' anyway.

So if you can’t strike out, how do you get 'out'?

You don’t get ‘out’ you get ‘bränn’ (burnt). You are ‘bränn’ if the ball gets thrown to ‘the burner’ (player at home plate) and you have not made it safely to a base. If you get burnt just have to go back to first base. Oh yeah, and did I mention multiple people can be on a base at the same time. and you never have to run if you don’t want to. You could stay on second all afternoon if you wanted, but it wouldn’t really score you any points.

What do you mean ‘points’? don’t you score runs?

Nope. Brännboll has an elaborate points system where the batting team can score points for runs (5 points for a home run), but the team in the field can also score points for bränns, catches, and if you burn a team so that all players are on the bases and no one is left to bat you get a bunch of points too.

So the game is over once the other team gets ‘burnt’?

no. the game ends after 24 minutes. each team gets 12 minutes for batting, and whoever has more points wins!

…just like baseball :)

After a few weeks of training, our team (yes, I actually joined a Swedish team sport!) went on to win 3 of 3 games in the preliminary round, but then were knocked out of the competition during our first game in the sudden death round.

All in all, Brännbollscupen was a beautiful, hot day in Umeå.

I got burned three times today.

Twice in the tournament and once from the blistering hot 10 am Swedish sun.