Lon Simmons
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Lon Simmons is an American baseball and football broadcaster, and is currently broadcasting part-time for the San Francisco Giants. His radio career began in Elko, Nevada, and he first announced baseball for a semipro league in Marysville, California. After a brief stint with the Fresno Sun Sox of the California League, Simmons came to San Francisco in 1957 as the play-by-play announcer for the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League, a post he held through the 1980 season.
Simmons' most famous call during his first stint with the 49ers came on October 25, 1964, when Minnesota Vikings defensive end Jim Marshall picked up a fumble by the 49ers' Billy Kilmer and ran it the wrong way, scoring a safety for the 49ers instead of a touchdown for the Vikings. The transcript of the call:
"(George) Mira, straight back to pass...looking, now stops, throws...completes it to (Billy) Kilmer up at the 30-yard line, Kilmer driving for the first down, loses the football...it is picked up by Jim Marshall, who is running the wrong way! Marshall is running the wrong way! And he's running it into the end zone the wrong way, thinks he has scored a touchdown! He has scored a safety!"
Simmons broadcasted games for the San Francisco Giants with Russ Hodges after they moved west in 1958, continuing until 1973. He returned in 1976 for three more years, before moving across the bay to call games for the Oakland Athletics from 1981 through 1995. From 1996 to 2002, he called Giants games part-time.
During Simmons' initial sixteen years with the Giants, the team never won a World Series. With both the Giants and Athletics his termination as play-by-play broadcaster was due to the respective team changing radio stations, with the new station wanting "its own man" to become lead announcer. For those reasons, at the start of the ninth inning of Game 4 of the 1989 World Series, Athletics' lead announcer Bill King, scheduled to announce the final inning's play-by-play, instead deferred to Simmons, who was thus able to announce to his radio audience three batters later that the A's had won the World Series over Simmons' former team, the Giants.
Simmons' first tenure as 49ers play-by-play announcer lasted 24 years, the team never winning a championship. One year after his departure, San Francisco began a run of Super Bowl victories. Simmons returned as the 49ers' announcer in 1987 and was reunited with long-time colleague, Wayne Walker. During the 1988 regular season, Simmons' call of Steve Young's breathtaking game-winning 49-yard scramble against the Minnesota Vikings became as memorable as the play itself.
The following January, San Francisco won Super Bowl XXIII over the Cincinnati Bengals, 20-16. Simmons' call of the 49ers' Super Bowl game-winning drive (punctuated by a Joe Montana-to-John Taylor TD pass) can be heard on the NFL Films highlights package of the game. Simmons again departed from the 49ers -- this time for good -- during the 1989 preseason following a dispute with the 49ers' flagship station, KGO Radio.
Simmons received the 2004 Ford C. Frick Award, given annually by the Baseball Hall of Fame to a broadcaster. He was elected to the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame in 2006 as a member of the first class to be inducted. Also in 2006, he was inducted into the Glendale Community College Athletic Hall of Fame, along with his teammate, friend and broadcast partner, Bill Thompson. Simmons' trademark call for home runs was, "Tell it goodbye!"
In May 2006, Simmons rejoined the San Francisco Giants as a fill-in broadcaster. He was hired back to be in the booth during four in-season trips to San Francisco from his home in Maui for the 2006 baseball season.
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| Preceded by Bob Uecker |
Ford C. Frick Award 2004 |
Succeeded by Jerry Coleman |
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