It’s the bottom of the eighth inning. The Lotte Giants cheerleaders run out with pompoms raised, but the audience doesn’t need a cue. Twenty thousand baseball fans are already on their feet, fists pumping the air, ready to sing in unison, “Busan seagull! Busan seagull! Deep down have you really forgotten me? Where are you now? Have you forgotten what I look like?”

Unlike, say, the Red Sox’s “Sweet Caroline,” Busan’s baseball anthem is a melancholy dirge written to a seagull — but it’s also a profession of loyalty to Korea’s most popular team. Affectionately nicknamed “The Seagulls” after Busan’s official bird, the Lotte Giants were the first team in Korea’s professional league to attract more than a million fans per season. And despite an unimpressive record (two series wins in 30 years of playing half a dozen other teams), Giants fans fill Busan’s Sajik Stadium for every game.

Young couples, families and groups of businessmen clad in orange-and-white jerseys rise to their feet for every chant, belting out the words as if the game depended on it. In addition to three different seagull songs (the others entitled “Sea Bird” and “Come Back to Busan Harbor”), each player receives his own anthem when he steps up to bat. Between snacking on fried chicken and soju, fans fashion pompoms out of newspaper strips and tie inflated orange shopping bags onto each other’s heads.

“I am a white sea bird who has lost its mate,” they lament — but you’d never guess from the fun they’re having.