By Morris Phillips

For 15 seasons, legendary Bay Area sports announcer Lon Simmons graced the airwaves for the Oakland A’s partnered with Bill King.

The pair had already accomplished plenty in the world of Bay Area professional sports.  King was simultaneously the voice of the Raiders and Warriors, and Simmons had enjoyed a long career with the Giants, partnered for the first 13 seasons with broadcasting giant Russ Hodges.

But in 1981, King was hired by the A’s and joined by Simmons.  The pairing was the brainchild of Walter Haas and the Haas Family, who had bought the team from Charlie Finley hoping to lift the prospects of the franchise that was sagging at that point.  Simmons recalled that never once did the ownership group interfere with the soon-to-be Hall of Fame broadcasters, allowing them to say what they felt for the entirety of their tenures.

“Not one time in those 15 years did anyone in the organization ask me why I said something or, told me I should have said something,” Simmons remembered.  “The Haases may have bitten their toungues several times, but they never criticized me.”

King and Simmons would go on to broadcast “Billy Ball” and the “Bash Brothers” along with the majority of Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson’s career in Oakland.  King with his signature “Holy Toledo!” and Simmons with his “Tell it Goodbye!” were an obvious hit with listening audiences and were a more than capable companion to the team’s rise on the field.

They were also paid handsomely for their work; Simmons and King combined to earn nearly $500,000 per season while they were in Oakland.

In 1989, the A’s were a juggernaut, loaded with talent and ended up in the Bay Area World Series opposite the Giants.  When King was felled by laryngitis, Simmons broadcast the final outs of Game 4 in Oakland’s sweep.  The irony couldn’t missed: Simmons had announced Giants’ games all those years without the team winning the World Series, but there he was doing the call when as the Giants lost on the game’s biggest stage.

In 1995, Simmons was let go as new ownership gained control.  He would go on to do short stints with the Giants until his retirement in 2002.

In 2004, Simmons was honored with Ford C. Frick award given annually to an exemplary major league baseball broadcaster.  In 2oo6, Simmons was inducted as a member of the initial induction class of the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame.