Left-fielder for Connie Mack’s formidable Philadelphia
Athletics from 1924 to 1932 and then for other major-league clubs through 1944. Simmons was born in Milwaukee on
May 22, 1902, the son of Polish immigrants.
He played high-school baseball before briefly attending Stevens Point
Teachers College as a football player and later playing semipro baseball in
Juneau, Wisconsin. The hometown
Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association signed the hard-hitting 6-foot,
200-pounder in 1922. They sent him to Aberdeen, South Dakota, of the Class D
Dakota League, where he hit .365 in 99 games.
He also played in 19 games for Milwaukee that season, getting 11 hits in
50 at-bats (.220). moved up the
following year to Shreveport in the Texas League, he duplicated his
performance, hitting .360 in a full season before playing out the rest of the
season with Brewers, where he sparkled, hitting .398 in 24 games. Simmons’ powerful hitting was achieved despite his
unusual batting stance. A right-handed
hitter and thrower, Simmons stood at the plate with his left (front) foot
pointed toward third base, “in the bucket” in baseball parlance. So, he gained the nickname Bucketfoot Al,
which he resented. Theoretically, he
should have had difficulty in hitting outside pitches solidly. But Simmons overcame this clear weakness by
using an unusually long bat and moving his left foot closer to home plate with
the approach of an outside pitch. As
Simmons explained, “I’ve studied movies of myself batting. Although my left foot stabbed out toward
third base, the rest of me, from the belt up, especially my wrists, arms, and
shoulders, was swinging in a proper line over the plate.”Though he was still the property of Milwaukee, Simmons
was interested at the time in playing for New York Giants manager John
McGraw. In 1922 he wrote to Roger
Bresnahan, the manager of the Giants’ American Association farm team at Toledo, and showed his availability for $150 in expenses. Bresnahan never responded. Years later, Simmons often commented, “I’m
not sure I would have enjoyed playing for McGraw. We were both hotheads and I’m afraid we’d
have clashed.” Athletics owner-manager
Connie Mack bought Simmons’ contract from Milwaukee after the 1923 season and
Al was an immediate success with the A’s debuting on April 4, 1924, and hitting
.308 with 102 RBIs in his freshman year.
He had a breakthrough season the following year with a sensational .387
average and an eye-opening 253 hits. In
1926 Simmons “slipped” to .341 and 199 hits.
He was hampered by injuries the following two seasons although he hit
high averages. But he rebounded over the
1929-31 seasons and, along with Mickey Cochrane, Lefty Grove, and Jimmie Foxx,
carried Connie Mack’s A’s to three straight overpowering pennant wins and two
World Series victories. Simmons was at
his peak during those three years. In
1929 he won the MVP award. In his last
season with Connie Mack, 1932, Simmons hit .322 while again leading the league
in hits, with 216. Simmons holds the major league record for reaching 1,500 hits in the fewest games, 1,040.
Simmons hit .329 in the four World Series in which he
played. He touched off the most
improbable inning in Series history, the seventh inning of the fourth game
between the A’s and the Cubs in 1929.
With the Cubs ahead 8-0, Simmons led off the inning with a home
run. The Athletics batted around and
were losing by only 8-7 when Simmons singled in his second at-bat of the inning
as the A’s completed a historic and unforgettable ten-run inning and went on to
win, 10-8.
Tommy Henrich recalled
a story Bill Dickey told him about Simmons. In 1928 the A’s were an up-and-coming
team. They came into New York late that
season for a crucial four-game series with the Yankees. Before the first game, the Yankees were
discussing what to do with the A’s big hitters like Jimmie Foxx, Mickey
Cochrane, Mule Haas, and Simmons.
Dickey remembered that somebody thought it would be a good idea to rough
Simmons up, to knock him down a little.
“So, we roughed him up," Dickey said.” "In a four game-series,
he had 11 hits, ten of them for extra bases.”
Henrich said, “Yeah, they roughed him up all right, and he returned the
compliment. He hated the Yankees, but I
liked him. I liked the way he would bear
down against us.”
Simmons had one of his most impressive days on
Memorial Day in 1930. The first-place
A’s were losing to the second-place Washington Senators 6-3 with two out and
two on in the bottom of the ninth.
Simmons homered to tie the game.
He doubled in the 11th inning but was left stranded. Simmons doubled again in the 13th
but again didn’t score. He doubled again
in the 15th, his fourth straight extra-base hit, and he was finally
driven home for a 7-6 win. Before he
scored, he injured a knee but managed to limp home.
Simmons’ swelling knee prevented his starting the
second game of the doubleheader. The
Athletics were losing 7-5 in the fourth inning when Simmons pinch-hit and hit a
grand slam that led to another A’s win.
After the A’s won the 1930 pennant, Washington owner Clark Griffith
said, “Simmons hit 14 of his 34 homers in the eighth and ninth innings and everyone
figured importantly in the final score.
We were never the same he licked us in that doubleheader.”
For a right-handed hitter, Simmons had great power on
his drives to the right of second base.
Hall of Fame second baseman Charley Gehringer told author Donald
Honig that Simmons hit the most wicked ground to second base. Simmons was pitched outside to negate his
pull-hitting power and, as Gehringer described it, “He’d hit to the right side. And he'd slice them. …He could blister
it.” Lefty Grove was another
Simmons admirer. “Could he ever hit that
ball! One year (1931) he held out until
the season started – finally signed for $100,000 for three years – and came
into Opening Day, no spring training or anything, and got three hits. And he was a great (defensive) outfielder.”
On the field, Simmons was a warrior, intent on damaging
the opposition and demolishing pitchers with his bat, stifling opposing teams’
rallies with his glove, and upsetting infielders with violent takeout
slides. He never lost his intensity for
baseball even when he was an Athletics coach after his playing days. During batting practice, the Yankees’ Tommy
Henrich used to urge coach Simmons to grab a bat and display his old hitting
form. Henrich remembered: “It was
something to see. When Al Simmons would
grab hold of a ball bat and dig in, he’d squeeze the handle of that doggone
thing and throw the barrel of that bat toward the pitcher in his warm-up
swings, and he would look so bloomin’ mad even in batting practice,
years after he had retired.
Joe Cronin
also was highly impressed by Simmons’ fielding.
Cronin said: “He was great all-around, running, fielding, and throwing,
as well as hitting and as a competitor.
There never was a greater left fielder in going to the line and holding
a double to a single. He’d even dare you
to make the wide turn at first on a ball hit to his right.”
In 1932 Simmons hit .322 with a league-leading 216
hits, but it was a difficult year for Connie Mack as, after three straight
pennants, his club finished second to the Yankees, and the relatively high
salaried A’s cost more than he could afford.
And so, at season’s end, Simmons was traded to the White Sox along with
infielder Jimmie Dykes and outfielder Mule Haas for $100,000. Simmons had two decent years with the White
Sox (.331 and .344), and helped out when the team moved home plate closer to the
outfield fences. But in 1935, playing
for an uninspiring second-place club, the 32-year-old Simmons slipped, his
batting average dropping to .267 and his RBIs slipping below triple-digits for
the first time in his major-league career.
Years later, Simmons admitted to a writer that he had accepted the White
Sox’ second-division attitude and had slacked off in his customary strenuous
practice habits. It was time to move on
and in the offseason, his contract was sold to Detroit for $75,000. The Tigers had won the 1935 pennant. Although he was well past his prime, Simmons
hit .327 with 112 RBIs in 1936, but the Tigers finished behind the murderous
Yankees. And Simmons was dealt to
Washington after the season.
Simmons had in indifferent years with the Senators,
then suffered through the 1939 season with the Braves and the Reds. After returning to the A’s in 1940-41, he sat
out the 1942 season as a coach but with World War II military demands for
younger players, he became a virtual baseball relic, appearing in 40 games for
the Red Sox and batting .203. After six
at-bats for the Athletics in 1944, retired.
He played in only 90 games in his last four big-league seasons. Simmons was a player-coach for the A’s in 1944,
then remained with Connie Mack as a full-time coach through the 1949
season. He concluded his major-league
involvement by coaching for the Indians in 1950-51.
Late in his playing career, Simmons set a goal of
obtaining 3,000 base hits. He came up 73
hits short. He bemoaned the times he had
begged off playing a nurse a hangover or left a one-sided game early for a
quick shower and a night out on the town.
Proud of his Polish ancestry, Simmons as a veteran coach imparted his
unachieved goal to another Polish-American.
“Never relax on any at-bat; never miss a game you can play,” he advised
a young Stan Musial.”
Writer Donald Honig wrote: “Simmons was a testy
character who was called ‘a swashbuckling pirate of a man’ by one
contemporary. King of his leagues’
right-handed hitters for a decade, he was an elitist who bullied rookies,
manifested a chilly disdain for lesser mortals, and even on occasion questioned
the wisdom of Mr. Mack. …Still” – discussing the fading recollection of Simmons
by later generations of fans and writers – “Simmons, with his old boiling
hatred of pitchers and a batting average of .334 which slots him fifth among
right-handed smackers, is becoming a statue in a dark and unvisited basement.”
Simmons had a lifetime batting average of .334 with
2,927 base hits (including 539 doubles_ and 1,825 RBIs. Despite his induction into the Hall of Fame in
1953, Simmons is not rated by all baseball experts as highly as his gaudy
statistics would suggest. Bill James did
rate him seventh among left fielders based on his 375 Win Shares. But In the Seventh Edition of Total
Baseball, possibly through inadvertence, Simmons was not rated among the
top 100 all-time players.
Well-respected catcher and baseball observer Ralph
“Cy” Perkins summed up Simmons when he spoke at Al’s Hall of Fame
induction: “He had that swagger of confidence, of defiance when he came up as
a kid. He was as sensational as a rookie
as he was as a star. I’ve always classed
him next to Ty Cobb (Simmons’s idol) as the greatest player I ever saw.
…He was what I would call the ‘perfect player,’” Sportswriter Bob Broeg agreed with that
tribute, writing, "High praise indeed, and even when he began to spend
more time with the sauce (drinking) in his last professional baseball job as a
coach with Cleveland in 1950, Simmons took pride in proper techniques and
methods.”
Simmons apparently mellowed as he neared the end of
his career. George Case was a
young outfielder with the Washington Senators when Simmons, then in his late
30s, became his teammate. One evening in
a Boston Bar, Simmons invited Case to join him for a drink. With no game the next day, the two men drank
together until 2:30 a.m., the teetotaling Case drinking ginger ale and Simmons
downing Scotch and water. Simmons
recounted the story of his life, telling Case, “You know, I have a reputation
for being coarse and a little ornery, but believe me, enough things have
happened to me in my lifetime to account for that.” Simmons went on to describe his rough time as a boy, how poor his family was, and how hard he had to work when he was
a young boy. After that, the two men
became close friends and Simmons gave Case a lot of good advice and
encouragement. As Case recalled, “He
turned out to be, under that gruff exterior, a very kindly and thoughtful man.”
In his last years in baseball, Connie Mack reflected on
his long baseball career. He kept only
one picture of a former player in his office, and it was the swaggering
Simmons. He asked which player could
provide the most value to a team, and Mack sighed, “If I could only have nine
players named Al Simmons.”
Simmons married Doris Lynn Reader of Chicago in August
1934. The couple had one son, John,
before divorcing. Because of religious
convictions, the restless Simmons remained single after his marriage broke
up. Close personally to Connie Mack,
Simmons told a writer, “Mr. Mack seemed to look on me as his son. He never stopped feeling sorry for me about the
breakup of my marriage,” and Mack
unsuccessfully urged him to patch things up.
Simmons died in his beloved Milwaukee on May 26, 1956, four days after his
54th birthday.
Sources:
·
Biographical Dictionary of American Sports, Greenwood
Press, 1987
· Bob Broeg, Super Stars of Baseball, The
Sporting News, 1971
·
Cooperstown Where the Legends Live Forever,”
Arlington House, 1988
·
Donald Honig, Baseball When the Grass Was Real, Berkley
Medallion Publishing
·
Donald Honig, Baseball America, Macmillan
Publishing, 1985
·
Donald Honig, Baseball Between the Lines, University
of Nebraska Press,1976
·
Bill James, The New Bill James Historial Baseball
Abstract, The Free Press
·
The Ballplayers, Arbor House, William Morrow,
1990
·
Total Baseball Seventh Edition, Total Sports Publishing,
2001
Full Name: Aloysius Harry Simmons
Born: May 22, 1902, at
Milwaukee, WI (USA)
Died: May 26, 1956, at
Milwaukee, WI (USA)
