KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Fifty years ago next month, Kansas City’s Tom Watson graduated from Stanford and joined the PGA Tour. In the same month in the same year, 1971, the Royals drafted George Brett, who in his ongoing role as “vice president for life” has remained with the franchise ever since.

From that harmonic convergence, their superlative careers ultimately would become entwined … much to Kansas City’s pride and gratitude. They ascended to legends in their sports and icons of the regional sportscape. And they came to enjoy the sort of friendship that makes them at ease interjecting when the other speaks and able to poke fun at each other … with their mutual admiration also quite obvious.

They’ve shared much over the decades, including an experience that they’d rather not have had: the loss of close friends to ALS.

In the case of Watson, it was his caddy, Bruce Edwards, whom Watson told, “I’ll work on this and try to find a cure for the rest of my life.” In the case of Brett, his pledge to his friend Keith Worthington to keep up the fight is enshrined in stone on the base of his statue at Kauffman Stadium: “I made a promise to a friend and I intend to keep it.”

That commonality unites them in a particularly significant way to help find a cure for the disease that Watson laments “is still a death sentence.”

All of that converged once more on a Monday morning earlier this month at the Joe McGuff ALS Golf Classic at LionsGate, the 39th version of the event now named for the renowned former Kansas City Star sportswriter and editor who suffered from the disease.

On this occasion, Brett touted his fundraising concept of #Change4ALS by telling the tale of taking to the bank what turned out to be $692 in change accumulated in a ceramic bucket at home over a few years.

“If everybody does that, could you imagine the amount of money we could raise for ALS?” he said, adding that it’s his aim for the program to go national … including in Major League Baseball clubhouses.

A moment later, Watson smiled and chimed in, “So get your change out of your pockets.”

In addition to constantly seeking to help fund the cause, Brett and Watson and the ALS Association Mid-America Chapter know that raising awareness in itself is crucial.

Maybe all the more so this year. Because as much as this event has become a rite of spring, and will remain a passion of theirs until a cure is discovered, May 10 marked the first time since 2019 that they held court together as usual at the event because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

They were glad to be back after a year-plus of adjustments of their own.

Brett binge-watched a lot of television series with his wife, Leslie, and came to feel one of the highlights of his days was walking his dog, London. When I spoke with him on the phone during one of those walks last May, he said, “It’s like Yogi (Berra) used to say: ‘Deja vu all over again.’ ” Golf later proved therapeutic.

Watson’s last year, he said, included lots of isolation on his farm with his dogs. But he later continued his adventures in cutting horse competitions inspired by his late wife and hero, Hilary, who died in 2019.

When Watson mentioned failing to make the cut in a recent competition, Brett razzed him as a “weekend warrior,” leading to a playful exchange about what Brett might lack as a golfer and Watson as a hitter. Which takes us to another of their shared fascinations: the state of the reeling Royals.

Brett watches most games, and Watson says he’s seen every one this season. But what each can really offer is the perspective of men who owned their sports and yet can relate to the nature of streaks and slumps with which each had to contend.

Appropriately enough in any conversation between them, Brett pivoted from Watson’s reference to late golfing mentor Stan Thirsk when asked what he makes of the Royals right now.

Hearkening to Thirsk’s advice to “learn to swing easy,” Brett said, “I think right now the Royals are swinging too hard. They’re trying to do more than they’re capable of doing.”

Watson echoed the sentiment, and Brett continued.

“When you’re winning it’s easy because everybody is contributing,” he said. “And now nobody is contributing, and everybody is trying to be the guy to get them over the hump. As a result, you try too hard. I’ve always said, ‘Don’t try harder, try easier.’ “

Brett also advocated simply thinking positive, offering an interesting example even if it may seem more applicable to the challenge of the individual mindset than the collective.

“You can trick yourself (into believing), ‘Today’s the day,’ ” he said.

That was one thing at the plate, where he understood that pitchers didn’t want to face him and figured every time he had a big hit in the playoffs, “I guarantee you my heart was beating slower than the pitcher’s.”

But it was another matter in the field. He thought about how error-prone he was when he was brought up in 1973 and for a time hoped the ball wouldn’t come to him.

“Every time I said, ‘Don’t hit it to me,’ guess what? They hit it to you,” he said. “The ball will find you.”

So he decided this: He’d tell himself “I want it, I want it, I want it.” And, presto, he became an accomplished fielder.

To Watson’s way of looking at it, “When none of the tools are working … you really just have to scramble and find out the best way to score.”

In essence, really, that meant tough it through and find a way … something the Royals were doing through 25 games with the best record in baseball (16-9).

“I always had the ability to score when I was playing badly,” Watson said. “I just wouldn’t allow myself to turn that bogey into a double bogey.”

Also: He believed Thirsk when he’d calmly tell him, “It will get better.”

We’ll soon see whether it does for the Royals.

But in the meantime, we know this: Fifty years since they turned pro at the same time, it doesn’t get much better for Kansas City than to have two of its most famous athletes stand so adamantly together for such a worthy cause that also will always be part of their legacy.