Famed "wrong-way" football call
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 (who won the game anyway, by a score of 27-22). The transcript of his call, including his mid-sentence transition as the moment occurred, reads as:
(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! His teammates were running along the far side of the field, Russ, trying to tell him go back![1]
Later career
Simmons broadcast 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.[2] 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 the 49ers, his termination as play-by-play broadcaster was due to the team changing radio stations, with the new station wanting "its own man" to become lead announcer.
During the final two games of the 1989 World Series, Athletics' lead announcer Bill King came down with laryngitis. Simmons was thus able to announce to his radio audience 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 management at the 49ers' flagship station, KGO Radio.
Simmons was replaced in the play-by-play spot by Joe Starkey, the long-time announcer for the California Golden Bears and an analyst with Simmons on 49ers games in 1987 and 1988; Starkey had taken over play-by-play on several October games during the 1988 season. Starkey retired from the position following the 2008 NFL season. Simmons died on April 5, 2015.[3]
