Lon Simmons
From SoSH
Lon Simmons has been a broadcaster in the Bay Area since 1957, working with the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics as well as the San Francisco 49ers.
Broadcasting Biography
Simmons's career in the Bay Area began in 1957 when he was working for the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League. He was with the 49ers through 1980, never broadcasting a championship. Of course, after he left, the team began a run of Super Bowl victories. Simmons returned in 1988 and was behind the microphone for San Francisco's victory over Cincinnati in Super Bowl XXIII. He left the 49ers for good after that season.
Simmons's baseball career started with a semipro league in Marysville, California, followed by a brief stint with the Fresno Sun Sox. Already in San Francisco with the 49ers, the Giants tabbed him to work with Russ Hodges when the team made its way west for the 1958 season. During a break in his tenure with the Giants, Simmons worked with the A's and was demoted to #2 man when the radio station's ownership changed hands. Simmons never got to announce a Giants game in the World Series until the very end of the 1989 World Series, when lead Athletics broadcaster Bill King allowed Simmons to call the game instead of himself when the A's defeated the Giants in Game 4 to clinch the title.
Simmons worked with the Giants from 1958 to 1973, from 1976 to 1978, and again from 1996 to 2002. He worked with the Athletics from 1981 to 1995. In May 2006, he returned to San Francisco as a fill-in broadcaster.
In 2004, Simmons received the Ford C. Frick Award from the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The Giants renamed the booth at AT&T park after him and Hodges in 2000.
Further Reading
- Lon Simmons's biography at the Baseball Hall of Fame website
- Lon Simmons - Courtesy of Wikipedia
