Giants fans' craze for baseball creates innovative cheering culture

Lotte Giants fans hold up their banners and hand-made newspaper dusters during the game against the Doosan Bears in this Korea Times file photo taken on Sep. 21, 2008, at the Sajik Baseball Stadium in Busan. Some of those banners read, “Seagulls are flying, while the Bears are crawling,” “The Giants are still hungry,” and “Lee Yong-hoon, the bear hunter.” Giants fans are well-known for their innovative use of cheer gear. / Yonhap

Garbage bags, newspapers recycled for cheer gear

By Kang Hyun-kyung

“Remember we came here all the way from the city of Miryang for you. You, the Giants, must win for us.”

Holding the banner reading those phrases in the stands near right field of the Daegu Samsung Lions Park on Tuesday evening, dozens of Lotte Giants fans chanted “Our Lee Dae-ho” as the namesake slugger appeared at home plate in the ninth inning.

They had come in from the provincial town just outside Daegu to watch in person the Giants’ showdown with the Lions on the day when Korea’s much-anticipated FIFA U-20 football match against Portugal in the round of 16 was held to determine the quarterfinalist.

The Giants-Lions game kicked off at 6:30 p.m. that day, while the football match began at 8 p.m. The FIFA Youth World Cup is held every two years and this time Korea is the host, allowing people here to have a rare opportunity to watch the games in football stadiums, not on TV.

Those Giants fans could have watched the football match and the Giants-Lions game simultaneously if they were at home as the two games had been airing on different TV channels that night. But they forwent the FIFA event for the baseball game which was one of the Giants’ 144 games to be held this year.

The Giants responded to their loyal fans by winning 1-0.

Giants fans are unstoppable and they are second to none when it comes to their loyalty for their favorite team.

Sajik Baseball Stadium earned the nickname — the world’s largest noraebang or singing room — because of the roaring Giants fans who sing together “their anthem,” the 1980s hit song “Busan Seagull,” to cheer for the players.

“People in Busan would ask how’s baseball today? They are asking if the Giants won or lost the game held that day,” said Jung Vum-june, author of the 2008 book “Memories of Giants: A Biography of Pitcher Choi Dong-won.” It chronicled the rise and fall of the legendary pitcher from the perspective of a longtime Giants fan. Choi died of colorectal cancer in 2011, saddening his fans.

In Busan, Jung said the Giants are equal to baseball.

“Baseball craze” in Busan is the collective expression of those residents’ mixed feelings toward themselves, their community and the club, according to him.

“Back in the early 1950s during the Korean War, Busan was the nation’s interim capital. This historical fact seemed to have affected people there to build up sort of a chosen-people pride,” he said. “Just as heroes are born out of adversity, they are facing various hardships in their daily lives. They view them as growing pains that would ultimately make them stronger, because they were born to lead, not follow.”

The avid baseball watcher and author of seven books said baseball madness in Busan also reflects an underdog mentality.

“Busan is the second-largest city after Seoul. There’s a parallel between the status of the city and the baseball club. The Giants are an underdog team that has striven to beat the mighty clubs, such as the Samsung Lions and Kia Tigers which won Korean Series championships many times,” he said. “Such a similarity seems to have motivated Busan residents to be attached to their home team much more than fans of other teams.”

Cho Seong-hwan, who played for the Giants between 1999 and 2014 and is now a baseball commentator for KBS Sports, said cheering from spectators help the players play better.

“Cheering fans definitely affect players’ performance. There’s no question about that,” he said. “We players say the big difference between the players on the major KBO League and the minor Futures League is that fans have major leaguers’ back but the minor leaguers don’t have such support from baseball fans because there are few spectators watching minor league games.”

Giants fans are well-known for their ingenuity. Several innovative cheer apparatuses first appeared at the Sajik ballpark and tailor-made home run songs for players were initially their idea that was passed on to other teams.

They recycled garbage bags and newspapers as cheer gear.

In the 1990s, Giants fans devised the hand-made paper dusters to cheer for the players. The newspaper cheer gear first appeared in 1993. But these innovations also generated a lot of trash left behind after games. The stadium handed out orange trash bags to spectators, who incorporated those into their cheering repertoire as well. They would inflate the bags with air and wear them atop their heads, with the strap handles looped under their ears. Orange is the color of the baseball club so the bags identify them as Giants fans.

Baseball madness also created the unique cheering culture there.

“A-ju-ra” is one of the key elements defining the cheering culture in Busan. When a ball lands in the stands as a result of a home run or fly ball, fans chant “a-ju-ra” for those who catch it. It means “give it to a child nearby.”

Jung said the baseball craze in general is a hero-driven phenomenon, noting legendary pitcher Choi Dong-won (1958-2011) triggered the boom in the early 1980s.

Choi’s life fits exactly how a hero was born and how he impacted the community, Jung said.

Choi’s sudden downfall years after the Giants won the best-of-Korean Series against the Lions in 1984 caused Busan fans to miss him long after his death.

The 1984 post-season championship games were epic. Choi pitched all during the five games of the Korean Series and won four with one loss. His role was critical behind the Giants’ post-season championship of the year.

Choi retired after the 1990 season, two years after he was traded to the Lions, a measure widely viewed as the club’s retaliation for his attempt to form a players’ union to protect their rights.

After retiring, Choi longed to return to the Giants as manager, a dream that never came true.

The Sajik ballpark set records. It attracted record-high spectators in the early 1990s. It is the first ballpark in Korea to attract over 1 million annual spectators, in 1992 when the Giants won the best-of-seven Korean Series against then the Binggrae Eagles which later became the Hanwha Eagles.

The total number of spectators that year was 1,209,632. The tally for spectators showed ups and downs year after year and the trend reflects the team’s performance.

In 2008 when the Giants made their first advance to the playoff season since the 1990s, the tally marked over 1.3 million annual spectators, the highest in KBO history.