A ball, stick and wooden stakes: these materials are used for “Valdostane Baseball”

The game is divided into two distinct phases. 

The first phase, similar to baseball, involves a player of a team pitching (tsachà), and another team in defence. The pitcher hits the tsan (wooden ball), balanced on the pertze (long pole), and tries to make it fall inside the field of play; if successful, a boun-a is awarded.

The defending team must instead catch the tsan with the stake before it touches the ground; a catch is signalled by the dry noise of the ball on the wooden stake, which is sometimes thrown into the air; if this occurs, or if the tsan ends up outside the field of play 3 times, the pitcher is out or replaced.

When all the players on a team have received the tsachà, we move onto the second phase. Each pitcher has the right to a new pitching series (paletà) in numbers equal to boun-e won in the 1st phase. This time the tsan is raised in the air (servìa) by an opposing player. The pitcher, now batting, uses a type of bat (piota) to check the servìa, making the tsan bounce once or twice, and then hurl it as far as possible. The distance reached is converted to points, on the basis of a point per metre. When all the pitchers have taken the paletà to which they were entitled, the teams change over.

A game includes both teams taking two turns per phase and the team with the most metres with the paletà wins.