Longtime Major League slugger Randall Simon joined the RailCats midway through the 2010 season.

Simon, 35, brings a resume stacked with 236 professional home runs over 19 seasons, including parts of eight years in the big leagues.  Originally signed by the Atlanta Braves off the tiny island of Curacao in 1992, Simon has played in 537 Major League games with the Braves, Detroit Tigers, Pittsburgh Pirates, Chicago Cubs, Tampa Bay Devil Rays and, as recently as 2006, with the Philadelphia Phillies.  A career .283 hitter in the major leagues, Simon’s last stay in Chicagoland came with the Cubs down the stretch of the 2003 season when the slugger batted .282 with six home runs in 33 regular season games and went 8-for-24 in 10 playoff games as the Cubs reached the National League Championship Series.

After soaring through the Braves minor league system and leading the International League (AAA) in doubles (45) and RBI (102) in 1997, Simon made his major league debut September 1, 1997 at Turner Field in Atlanta in an interleague game against the Tigers.  Simon would go 6-for-14 as a 22-year-old pinch-hitter in his rookie year and was once again a late-season call-up in 1998.  The left-hander made his first Opening Day roster in 1999 and acquitted himself quite nicely in 90 games, batting .317 with 16 doubles, five home runs and 25 RBI for the Braves.

Simon bounced between three clubs the following year before landing in Detroit in 2001 and hitting .305 in 81 games for the Tigers that summer.  Simon would put together his best big league campaign the following season, spending 130 games in Detroit and batting .301 with 17 doubles, 19 home runs and 82 RBI.  Simon was traded to the Pirates in 2003 before a deadline deal with the Cubs, then went back to Pittsburgh in 2004.

The durable 35-year-old has hit at every stop during his 19-year career, including big seasons in the Mexican League in 2005 and 2006, hitting a combined 37 home runs in 127 games.  Simon joined the independent ranks in the United States in 2008 with the Newark Bears of the Atlantic League and continued to produce with a .321 average and 11 home runs.

Simon was signed by the Northern League’s Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks in 2009 and played in 75 games, hitting 13 home runs and driving in 51 before leaving the team to train and compete with the National Team of the Netherlands.  Curacao, Simon’s home country, is part of the Netherlands Antilles just off the coast of Venezuela.  Back in the Northern League to start the 2010 season, Simon hit seven home runs and drove in 19 in only 27 games for the Rockford RiverHawks before being released.

In more than 1,300 minor league games, Simon has an impressive .293 lifetime average and .468 slugging percentage, clocking 187 minor league home runs and collecting nearly 500 extra-base hits.  Simon has driven in over 1,000 runs in his career between the major and minor leagues and has always been a tough hitter to strike out despite his prodigious power.  Statistically the single toughest hitter in the Northern League to strike out last year (once every 16.25 plate appearances), Simon has just 574 minor league strikeouts in nearly 5,000 at bats.