A few players came to know her as, "The Baking Lady," for all the cookies and such she shared with athletes. Some, like former Astros and Detroit Tigers reliever Todd Jones may have called her The Landlady, as she lent him a room one minor league season, or The Chauffeur, as she gave him and fellow hurler Shane Reynolds lifts to the ballpark as rookies.

Those who pay to come to the ballpark know Knowling, 85, better as The Lady With The Cowbell. She's rung her noisemaker at games since games have been played.

And the trademark clanger even has a story. Seems that it went missing in 1999 or 2000 at a Kissimmee Cobras minor-league game, and turned up about six years later in another fan's garage.

“The man didn't want to give it to anyone at the stadium, but Pete (Rodriguez, stadium manager) finally got it and gave it to me at that year's season ticket banquet,” she said.

You have to love a lot of baseball to see all those games, and Knowling loves the game. She used to play in a lot with her friends, girls and boys, in her native Middletown, N.J.

“A carpet factory went on strike for a while and the workers would arrange a game between the girls and the boys,” she said. “They would cheat to help the girls win.”

She followed various teams through the newspaper up there, but became an Astros fan after moving to Florida with her late husband in 1976, nine years before Houston's franchise brought its spring base inland from Cocoa.

She's no casual fan of the team, now. She claims to have attended every single minor-league game the Osceola Astros, later the Cobras, played in Kissimmee. She also volunteered her time when the Senior League World Series was played here in the summers, the last time in 2002.

Trying to refute these statements really proves fruitless.

“I've been here 17 years,” Rodriguez said. “I can't think of a day that I've been in the park that she hasn't.”

Jeff Kuenzli, the complex's facility coordinator, goes back 21 years as a scorekeeper, clubhouse attendant, intern and Cobras' general manager. He can't do it either.

“If that's what she says, then I believe it,” Kuenzli said. “She's always been there.”

That impressive, Cal Ripken-like streak came to an end in 2007, after a January car accident put her out of commission for two springs. It also put the brakes on what would have been her first trip to Houston to see the Astros play in their home. Last season, she passed on two night games.

But her attendance at all those games — and a few practices at the complex's back fields — has resulted in a collection of more than 100 autographed baseballs, two full binders of baseball cards and programs from each spring season. That impressive collection, by her own arrangement, will go to one of her daughters after she passes on.

Her game day itinerary is generally the same, especially early in the spring. She'll arrive at the park as early as 11 a.m., two hours prior to game time, and stroll down to “Autograph Alley,” a porch-like area along the left field line right next to the field-side clubhouse entrance, in order to add to her autograph collection as the Astros finish batting practice.

She watches as many games as she can during the season on TV, but the ballpark experience — part social event, part “rooting on her boys” — keeps her warm during the winter.

"All year I look forward to this. I just love baseball better than anything else,” she said.

It helps that she feels like the Astros are good springtime company.

“All the players have had respect,” she said. “I miss the minor-league team. Pete does good work, he knows how to talk to people. And I like Jeff, I've watched him grow up.”