Lon Simmons

Lon Simmons is a former American baseball and football broadcaster. 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.

Related Topics:
American - Baseball - Football - Elko, Nevada - Marysville, California - Fresno Sun Sox - California League - San Francisco - San Francisco 49ers - National Football League

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Simmons also broadcast games for the San Francisco Giants 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.

Related Topics:
San Francisco Giants - Oakland Athletics

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During Simmons' 24-year tenure as 49ers play-by-play announcer, the team never won a championship, though two years after his departure the team began a run of Super Bowl victories. Likewise, during Simmons' initial sixteen years with the Giants, the team never won a World Series. And, with both teams, 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.

Related Topics:
Super Bowl - World Series

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For those reasons, at the start of the ninth inning of Game Four 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.

Related Topics:
1989 World Series - Bill King

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Simmons received the 2004 Ford C. Frick Award, given annually by the National Baseball Hall of Fame to a broadcaster. His trademark call for home runs was, "You can tell it goodbye!"

Related Topics:
Ford C. Frick Award - Baseball Hall of Fame - Home runs

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