Bucketfoot Al: The Baseball Life of Al Simmons

Al Simmons, at top form in the Roaring Twenties, sparked one of baseball’s greatest dynasties, the Philadelphia Athletics, to multiple championships, before becoming just another ballplayer. While his achievements demonstrated greatness, he was not an easy man to like--for those competing against him or with him--and he seemed to play to the level of team expectation. Contemporary accounts and other recollections give us a sense of Al Simmons the person and the ballplayer, his connections to people, his teams and his ability to capture the fans’ imagination in his halcyon days.

Clifton Blue Parker is a magazine editor at the University of California, Davis, and a former newspaper journalist and Congressional press secretary. A member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), he lives in Davis, California.