Born in Vancouver, WA and raised in Southern California, Lon Simmons’ unmistakable baritone voice was the soundtrack of sports in the Bay Area for many years.
Simmons was a star baseball player at Burbank High School and Glendale Junior College. He served in the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II. After the war, he was offered a professional baseball contract by the Philadelphia Phillies.
An injury ended his minor league career after one game. But Simmons had that voice, and he found work spinning records, reading the news, and calling high school football games in Elko, NV.
He’d later work in Marysville, where he also volunteered to announce high school play-by-play for local teams. He moved on to KMJ in Fresno, where for the first time, sports was his full-time radio job.KSFO hired him as sports director in 1957. . When the Giants arrived in 1958, he teamed with established New York Giants announcer Russ Hodges on the air.
Simmons’ trademark home run call, “Tell It Goodbye!” was a complement to Hodges’ “Bye, Bye, Baby!”. His laconic style and self-deprecating wit helped make Simmons a fan favorite.
Along with his work on Giants broadcasts, Simmons spent several seasons as the radio voice of the San Francisco 49ers. He was part of the Oakland A’s radio team from 1981 to 1995, returning to the Giants on a part-time basis from 1996 through 2002.
Simmons was honored with the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasters in 2004.
Lon Simmons died in 2015 at the age of 91.