Author Spotlight
Lyda Cosgrove
Dressed head to toe in “KC” studded earrings and a Royals t-shirt and pendant necklace with her room decked out in blue lights and posters, you can find history teacher Brenda Fishman celebrating what she calls her “own little Royals spirit week.”
Thursday, March 30, marked the opening day for the Kansas City Royals baseball team and the beginning of Fishman’s favorite season.
Fishman credits her love for baseball to her grandmother and mother, who grew up fans of the Kansas City Athletics before they became the Royals. She held season tickets throughout her childhood and even as she grew older and busier with other activities, she says she was never without a game to watch. She and her brother filled their time with all kinds of baseball — not just the Royals.
“If my brother didn’t have a 3 and 2 game, then he’d be asking me to stay and watch other people’s kids play baseball,” Fishman said.
Though Fishman no longer holds season tickets, she heads out to the Kauffman Stadium as often as she can. And when she can’t make it in person, she’s tuned in via radio, listening to each moment of the game — she’s even stayed up-to-date on all of their pre-season games.
“I tend to like the radio announcers better than the television,” Fishman said. “Usually, if I’m at home, I’ll turn the radio on and the TV on with no volume and listen that way, and sometimes they’re off kilter a little bit so that’s quite interesting. If I’m not in the house, then I usually have my radio with me.”
Fishman doesn’t just express her love for the team with her outfits and unwavering attendance of each game. She’s turned her extra guest bedroom into an entirely Royals-dedicated space, painted two shades of blue and filled with Royals memorabilia from ticket collages to hat collections, bobble head collectibles and a jersey signed by former left fielder Alex Gordon.
When the Royals were in the World Series during the 2014 and 2015 seasons, Fishman even decked out the exterior of her house — complete with blue lights, streamers and a child mannequin dressed in a Royals t-shirt.
“It’s kind of very strange now that you think about it,” Fishman said. “Usually I decorate a lot for Halloween…but I kind of skipped over Halloween in ’14 and ’15 and just did Royals stuff. It was just kind of crazy.”
Though her collection has been a long-time in-the-making, she officially started putting the room together in 2016 after her collection multiplied after the 2015 World Series Win.
But it’s not disorganized or chaotic by any means, she says. She simply wanted everything to be nicely displayed. So instead of letting her old ticket stubs lay around, she had them arranged and framed at Michaels.
She hasn’t planned which games she’ll be going to yet this season, but she’s printed off the schedule and usually goes based on when there’s a particular team she wants to see them play or when they have a promotional item night — especially bobbleheads. She never seeks out particular items, just takes whatever she finds and has a place for it.
“I just kind of keep [the room] to myself,” she said. “I don’t think it’s overdone and crazy, like the walls aren’t going to cave in because there’s so much hanging from them. It’s just tasteful.”
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