Korea has a professional baseball league, and we have gone to see two games in Daegu. The Daegu team is the Samsung Lions. In the US, teams are typically branded based on their city, not their sponsors, but here, teams are identified almost exclusively by their sponsors: LG, Kia, Hyundai, Samsung, etc.. Even though Samsung is a huge company, their stadium is kind of dinky. We arrived very early for the first game and picked up fried chicken sold to us by screaming vendors in front of the stadium.

The Samsung team has 4 mascots and 4 cheerleaders, from what we saw. The mascots are hilarious lions; two that are apparently female and two that are male. They prance around the field, mostly punching and kicking each other, which Koreans think is hilarious.
Kids watching the mascots:
The mascots came out at one point with pictures of the cheerleaders attached to their faces, and proceeded to strip out of their lion costumes, to tanktops and bike shorts, and do a racy dance.
It was hilarious, and I caught it all on video, but I can't figure out how to post it here because it's a huge file.
The cheerleaders stand on a platform in the crowd, and they come out wearing different outfits throughout the game. Things get pretty exciting, especially during the last few innings.
This is a picture of the stadium (see how small it is!) towards the beginning of a game. Many people inflate thundersticks, which are essentially just tubes that you smack together. If you work on your technique, they make a loud cracking sound.
Baseball players stretching out:
I have lots of photos of baseball players stretching out. It's fun to see what the zoom on my camera can do!
Michael, Naomi, and I before the first game we saw:
And Miguel, Naomi and I before the second ...:
...and Antonio, Sergio, and Michael - we were sitting in the front for this game, right by the fence and just past third base:
... sitting this close to the field, we could see lots of the baseball players warming up before the game. One of the players:
....was obviously not Korean. The old zoom lens came in handy again!
Michael called him over and he kindly obliged. His name is Gary Glover and he's played for the major leagues in the US for about 8 years. More recently, he's played for Japanese and Korean teams. He plays for the SK Wyverns now, so he isn't a Samsung Lion, but this didn't stop dozens of kids from descending upon us when they saw that one of the baseball players had come over to sign autographs!

Korean baseball fans have a lot of fun at the games, and we were drawn to this guy, sitting behind us. He was chanting along with all the cheers, enthusiastically. Behold, a rare Korean beer belly:
The Samsung Lions didn't do well at either game I saw.
In the first game, the Kia Tigers scored 10 points in the first 3 innings! The Lions rallied, but couldn't save the game. The second game, the final score was 2-6. I may have to switch loyalty if it continues like this ... I'm a fair weather baseball fan!
What would a game be without some confusing English? This shirt was in front of us at the first game:
....huh??