(Columbia Daily Tribune, January 14, 1995)
They called him ``Hi'' because of his height. Anybody who came within a foul ball of the Missouri baseball program during John Simmons' days couldn't avoid being touched by his seemingly endless shadow, friends and family recalled last night, a day after Simmons died at his home. He was 89.
Simmons lost his larynx and his voice to surgery in 1979, the result of cancer. That condition and ``maybe old age more than anything else just caught up with him,'' his youngest son, Robert, said.
A moment of silence will be observed before tipoff of Missouri's basketball game against Kansas State tonight, athletic director Joe Castiglione said. In that moment, the university family will mark the passing of the legend who brought MU baseball to prominence.
Simmons framed a 481-294-3 career record with enough honors to fill a small encyclopedia during his 35 seasons. He is best remembered for fashioning a
group of mostly Missouri-born players into the 1954 national championship team, one of only two national titles in MU athletic history. His teams made six appearances in the College World Series in Omaha, Neb., finishing second four times.
``I think he was paying taxes in Nebraska,'' said Norm Stewart, who like many was able to smile when he talked about The Master. Stewart, now coach of the
Tiger men's basketball program, pitched on Simmons' 1954-56 teams.
Stewart said Simmons' lessons often reached beyond the baselines.
``I think people like John `Hi' Simmons influenced people,'' Stewart said. ``People that were around him, he was an excellent teacher.
``The thing he had, a great gift, was his humor. He did in it a distinct manner. It was all the time. He had it going all the time. It wasn't any attempt'' to be funny on purpose; ``it was just him, the way he talked and the
way he saw things.''
A master of the game, who had an eye for untapped talent, Simmons possessed a stubborn streak that demanded near perfection of his players and stressed the timeless march of fundamentals. If your performance didn't agree with Simmons, ``he had his own unique way of letting you know,'' said Gene McArtor, whom Simmons recommended to succeed him after 1973. ``He would let you know right
away.''
Like the time during McArtor's first season as head coach, when Simmons called after MU was roughed up in a doubleheader.
``He said, `Well, I'd like to indicate a little problem to you,' '' McArtor said. ``Boy, I was all ears because I was going to hear something from The Master. And he said, `You haven't got any damn pitching.' ''
That was always Simmons' way.
``He was just a hard hombre,'' Gary Woods, who played in '63 and '64, once told the Tribune. ``He couldn't say two words without a word-and-a-half being a curse word. In a loving way, he'd call you an S.O.B.''
Said Dennis Musgraves, a member of the '64 four-man rotation that still holds the NCAA record for team ERA at 0.65: ``He was stern with his ballplayers, but
I don't think anyone that I played with was afraid of him.''
In a 1991 interview, Simmons told the Tribune: ``I enjoyed my players. I treated them all alike. I always felt that if you wanted to get the best out of the players, you had to let them know that it's fun to play, and it's fun to be alive.''
Though he had not visited the MU field that bears his name in about 10 years and had been in particularly poor health the last few months, ex-players still dropped by the Simmons home in Columbia, phoned and sent cards often, Robert Simmons said. Most members of the '54 team went to his home last May during their 40th reunion weekend.
The '54 team was lionized, but Robert Simmons said his father believed he had more talented teams and relished the runner-up seasons.
Perhaps what he enjoyed most was ``the development of his players,'' Robert Simmons said. ``The University of Missouri baseball team certainly had a great reputation over the years, but frankly it didn't always have a lot of money and school support. The real success I think my dad had was to take a player and develop them to their highest ability.''
Born Aug. 16, 1905, in Lancaster near the Iowa border, Simmons graduated from Kirksville State College, now Northeast Missouri State. Tall in those days at 6-foot-3, Simmons lettered in three sports under Don Faurot.
Faurot hired Simmons to the MU football staff in 1935 and put him in charge of scouting.
``He always gave the report on Sunday afternoons,'' said his wife of 56 years, Jan. ``And from what I heard the boys say, he made it colorful.''
The Simmons baseball era began in 1937.
``Not just part of an era,'' Castiglione said. ``He was an era.''
John "Hi" Simmons
1905-1995
Obituary
John "Hi'' Simmons, 89, of Columbia died Thursday, Jan. 12, 1995, at his home.
Services are 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 15, at First Presbyterian Church with the Rev. H. Wilkes O'Brien officiating. Burial will be in Memorial Park Cemetery.
Visitation will immediately follow services at the church.
Mr. Simmons was born Aug. 16, 1905, in Lancaster to Oliver H. and Etta Leedom Simmons.
On Jan. 22, 1939, he married Francis Janet Vlcek, and she survives.
Mr. Simmons was head baseball coach at the University of Missouri-Columbia from 1937 to 1973, and also worked as an assistant to former MU football coach Don Faurot.
His baseball teams won 11 conference championships and in 1954 won the first NCAA title in school history. He led MU to six appearances in the NCAA College World Series in Omaha, Neb.
He was former president of the American Baseball Coaches Association and in 1977 was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. He also is a member of the ABCA Hall of Fame.
Other survivors include three sons, John Simmons Jr. of Tinley Park, Ill., Don Simmons of Virginia Beach, Va., and Robert Simmons of Chesterfield; a sister, Christine Melvin of Los Bandos, Calif.; and five grandchildren.
He was preceded in death by his parents and a sister.
Memorials can be made to the John ``Hi'' Simmons Athletic Scholarship Fund in
care of the MU Athletic Department, PO Box 677, Columbia, Mo., 65205.
Simmons had been coaching at Missouri when the players of '54 were pre-schoolers, and he would stay on the job until they were crowding 40.
``He could rip you up one side and down the other without saying very many words,'' Dickinson said.
There were object lessons as well.
Kammer recounted one intrasquad game. ``I
remember one guy, he just sent him up there without a bat because he wouldn't pay any attention to take a ball.''
Jerry Schoonmaker remembers Simmons as ``very unexplosive, which I appreciate. I don't like the yellers and the screamers, never have.''
(Columbia Daily Tribune, May 14, 1994)
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