Kauffman’s cheers are sweet music to Kansas City Royals fan that lives on a bluff nearby

Sunday night, Betty Bright will take her seat in front of the TV for the Royals game.

Not directly in front. She has to sit off to the side and watch from the periphery or the picture blurs.

Eye problem. Macular degeneration.

But her ears are great. She hears the future.

Just like in that wild Wild Card Game the other night — she knew Salvador Perez would get the winning hit before he even swung the bat. Not hoping, not wishing. She knew.

That’s because her front door was open. Betty, 80, lives on the bluff to the north above Kauffman Stadium, close enough to hear the cheers. Her cable lags about 30 seconds behind. So shortly before midnight, bottom of the 12th, two outs, runner on second and Perez at the plate, Betty heard the sweet music.

She sat there, watching, arms raised, and waited for the dance.

But even without the tip-off, she’s not the kind to quit. More than a year ago, she was given six to nine months to live. If she can double up on life expectancy, surely the Royals can eke out a couple of runs in the 12th.

Neither one, it seems, gives up as long as they have another at-bat.

Betty’s family has said their goodbyes more than once, according to her son.

“This season has been life to her,” Stephen Bright said. “It’s given her something to hope for, something to cheer for.

“The Royals have no idea their biggest fan lives right across the street.”

They’ve been her guys going back to the beginning in 1969. She cheered through the glory days and kept going through the 100-loss seasons.

Betty Bright is not about to miss this thing now.

“I’m here, and I’m going to watch it all,” she said on her front porch.

‘Keep listening’

Betty’s an old ball player. Played a decent third base back in the 1940s during recess at Hazel Grove Elementary in Kansas City, Kan.

Throws left, she said with a nod. She could guard the line.

And 70 years later, there’s nothing quite like watching a ball game with Betty. So says her daughter, Denise Belcher, who lives with her.

First off, about the time the Royals are tying their cleats, Betty is putting on her team shirt and pants. She wears a necklace with a little Royals bear on it. She bought it 35 years ago at a craft show and wears it every game.

“I tell my mother that’s her rosary,” Belcher said.

Betty used to call the bear George Brett. Now it’s Billy Butler. She talks to him when he’s batting. Offers him tips like, “Why did you swing at that?”

She sits to the side in the living room, struggling to see. She eats popcorn, cheers, jeers and offers lots of advice to manager Ned Yost. The front door is open for home games.

“You hear anything?” she asks during tense moments.

She never misses a game and never turns one off early. If the family is vacationing in the Ozarks, she listens on a little radio.

It’s been that way as long as her family remembers.

Betty doesn’t know where the baseball thing came from. Not her father. He was a farmer who also worked at the Ford plant in Claycomo and was not much of a ball fan. Nor was her husband. He worked as a brick mason until dying in a scaffolding accident in 1987.

She and Robert had four children. Now Betty has several grandchildren. For years, she worked at the Wyandotte County Courthouse as a secretary, retiring in 1993.

She moved to the little white house on the bluff about five years ago, adding an old-fashioned touch to her allegiance to the Royals.

“They’re my neighbors,” she said.

Betty’s health problems kept her in hospitals and rehabilitation centers for long stays before she finally came home in February, about the time Royals pitchers and catchers reported for spring training.

She’s been with them every game since.

“They brighten her day no matter how bad she feels, and I know they’ve kept her going this year,” Belcher said.

When things got bleak the other night during the Wild Card Game — down 7-3 — Stephen Bright called from his home in Lathrop, Mo. He told his mother that he was sorry, that he knew how much the game meant to her.

“Keep listening,” she told him. “They’re going to turn it around. I just know it.”

He called back when it was over.

“I don’t know how you do it …”

Magical season

A midday knock brings Betty Bright shuffling to the front door.

She’s wearing a Royals shirt and pants. Soon she will shower and put on something different: a different Royals shirt and pants.

For now, she takes a seat on the front porch. Light rain falls in the yard. Tucker, a cocker spaniel, jumps onto the chair next to her, curls into a ball and goes straight to sleep.

Betty takes the bear, the Billy Butler bear on her necklace, and holds it up. It’s chubby, she points out.

“Now, Billy has lost some weight,” she says. Then adds: “But he’s still slow.”

The back of the scoreboard and upper decks of the stadium rise to the south. Betty and Denise used to go across the street to a vacant house and watch the fireworks on Friday nights.

The house is gone now. They see the fireworks fine from the front porch.

Betty used to go to some games. Not anymore. Bad heart, bad hip, bad eyes.

But she likes hearing the cars on game night. They come up Farley Avenue looking for a cheap place to park in someone’s yard. Must have had a couple hundred stop at the corner before the Wild Card Game, she said.

She expects the same Sunday night when the Royals play again.

No one knows when this magical season will end. Spring was a long time ago, summer is gone and October is here.

Darkness comes early now and brings cool nights.

But not too cool. The front door up on the bluff stays open.

Betty Bright wants to hear her neighbors’ music as long as they play it for her.

This story was originally published October 4, 2014 at 3:05 PM with the headline "Kauffman’s cheers are sweet music to Kansas City Royals fan that lives on a bluff nearby."