There are many baseball fans in Busan whose quality of life depends on the performance of the Lotte Giants for a week. This reporter was one of them, and his love of baseball led him to start the ‘Busan Baseball Memoirs’ series. Through this project, we were able to meet baseball players in Busan, from the baseball club members of Yangjeong Elementary School, who are dreamers of Korean baseball, to Park Min-sung, a member of the women’s national baseball team. As the baseball stories piled up, ‘Busan Baseball Storybook’ reached its thirteenth installment.
In addition to articles, ‘Busan Baseball Silo’ captures stories through interview videos, so there were some stories that could not be captured due to the limited amount. Today, we’re going to tell you some of the stories we haven’t been able to tell and the stories behind the interviews.
One of the most memorable interviews we did was with Cheerleader George Hoon. In fact, he was supposed to be the first interview when we started planning Busan Baseball Silo. However, as the Lotte Giants gained momentum in April and May, his schedule became increasingly busy. This could have made it difficult for the interview to take place, but he was kind enough to give up his time to speak with us.
The Lotte Giants have always been a source of pride for their fans, even when the team was not performing well. As such, we had a lot of questions to ask, and the response from the community was overwhelming. For more than 30 minutes, the cheerleading squad leader, George Hoon, sincerely answered questions from the Busan Baseball Reporters and Lotte Giants fans, with the most common topic being the cheer. With so many cheerleaders under his belt, how does he create them?
[Busan Baseball].
What is the process of creating the Lotte Giants’ cheer?
[Cheerleading coach George Hoon]
We have a separate music director. If we have an original song, we can discuss it, but if we have to write our own, the director and I compose and write together. I first hum or create a melody, and then the director listens to it and makes corrections. I think it’s been about four years since we made it this way.
The Lotte Giants’ individual player cheers began in earnest around 2007. At the time, the creation of the individual cheers was a big adventure for George Hoon. 토토사이트
[George Hoon]
At that time, the Lotte players I saw had their own distinct personalities compared to the batting order. I remember that there were no similar types of batters from the first to the ninth position. There were players who were good at defense but not hitting, players who were too big but really good at hitting, and players who were weak on the basepaths compared to hitting. So I thought, “Why don’t we make individual cheers?” At that time, the batting order also had cheers for representative players, but it was rare for everyone from the first to the ninth position to have a cheer. We prepared for the 2006 season.
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