A two-and-a-half hour drive from Vienna will get you to the town of Attnang-Puchheim, a small village with fewer than 9,000 residents. It may not look the part, with its cozy homes and historic architecture in the Alpine foothills, but once a year it becomes the center of European baseball and softball with the Finkstonball festival.
The name is a take on the Catholic holiday of “Pfingsten,” which Canadian ballplayer and Baseball Jobs Overseas founder and CEO David Burns had trouble spelling.
“He wrote me once with ‘Finkston’ and I thought, ‘That sounds cool. We’re gonna call it Finkstonball,'” Rainer Krankl, the founder of the event, told MLB Europe in their recent documentary about the event, which you can watch at the top of this story.
Founded in 1997, the event is hosted every spring by the Attnang-Puchheim Athletics of the Austrian Bundesliga. As fans have continued to flock to the event over the years, the stadium has been expanded with new seating sections and impressive concession areas like a tiki bar added in center field. More teams and players have been added as the festival has grown, too. Though softball was introduced to Finkstonball in 2015, this past May was the first time there were an equal number of baseball and softball clubs participating.
“Finkstonball is something like a family reunion,” Sebastian Libiseller, the president of the Attnang-Puchheim Athletics, told MLB.com over Zoom recently. “It happens once a year and every year you bring in new members to the family — you have a new son-in-law there and your daughter-in-law and the family grows every year.”
It’s a true international event, too. This year, the Trotters — a team of Baseball Jobs Overseas All-Stars — won the baseball tournament, defeating Vindija Varazdin from Croatia in the baseball finals, while the Vienna Metrostars beat the Guggenberger Legionaere from Germany to take home the softball crown. In addition, there were teams from Switzerland, the United States, Canada, and Hungary.
While it may seem strange for this global showcase to come to such a remote town, Libiseller thinks that’s one of the positives for the event.
“I think it’s even better that it’s in such a small place because everything is so centered around baseball for that weekend,” Libiseller said. “You can pretend that baseball is the most important thing ever for those four days. You don’t read the news for four or five days, you don’t hear what’s happening out in the world. You just stay with your friends and make new friends.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean the on-field action isn’t intense or that the fans don’t get into it. When the Athletics defeated the X-Presidents with a walk-off walk on Saturday night, the crowd — and the players — got into it.
“There is real kind of home team support and those dramatic moments — it was brilliant,” Amy Stoparczyk, MLB Europe’s social media manager, said. “The tournament’s competitive at the end of the day. It is a strong, strong showing.”
Baseball may be the main attraction, but there is plenty more going on all weekend long. Along with the on-field action, beer and food is readily available while bands perform on a nearby stage deep into the night. Though it’s not open 24 hours a day, it comes pretty close. Thanks to the help from nearly 200 volunteers, Libiseller estimates that the days are about 21 hours long.
“We’re getting older, that’s a problem,” Libiseller joked. “Back in the days, we would go for a full day straight, including the party. Now, I can’t even stay up even without alcohol. I have to go to sleep.”
“The music festival goes way into the night. Sebastian’s helping people out the door,” Stoparczyk said. “And then he’s inviting them in only a couple hours later. You’re just fully immersed.”
Libiseller has seen how baseball has grown in Austria and around Europe over the last two decades and he knows that Finkstonball plays an important part in that growth. Events like this don’t just give the fans something exciting to watch, it helps connect teams and players from around the world every year.
“If the players love it and the people enjoy the time at the ballpark, they’re going to come back every year and most likely they will tell their kids to start playing baseball,” Libiseller said. “It’s great advertising for us and it’s a great showcase of what a small sports club and a small sport in Europe can do. We can show that it’s not all soccer and skiing.”
Source : MLB