With voting continuing in the St. Louis Cardinals 2014 Hall of Fame class, it’s the perfect time to take a look at one of the nominees: Ted Simmons.

He was a Cardinal from 1968 to 1980, making his major league debut at age 19. He was a six-time All-Star in his Cardinals days and started at catcher for the National League in 1978 — which you can see a clip of below.

In 1975, Simmons set the National League record for hits by a catcher with 188. He posted six seasons of 20 or more home runs and 10 consecutive seasons from 1971-80 with 75 or more RBI. His 172 home runs rank ninth and 929 RBI are seventh all-time in Cardinals franchise history.

Oh, and he inspired the name of a fantastic Cardinals history blog, RetroSimba. (If you don’t regularly read Mark Tomasik’s work, you should — you will learn much.)

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