Bobby Winkles

Bobby Brooks Winkles (born March 11, 1930 in Tuckerman, Arkansas) is a legendary former baseball coach at Arizona State University. Bobby Winkles coached from 1959-1971 and was the first varsity baseball coach at Arizona State University. Winkles laid the foundation for the legacy that has become Sun Devil baseball. His overall record while head coach at ASU is 524-173. In his 11 years at work at ASU, Winkles coached ASU to its first three national titles (1965, 1967, and 1969). Winkles coached several great players while he was at the helm of the Sun Devils, including Rick Monday, Reggie Jackson, Paul Ray Powell, Sterling Slaughter, and Larry Gura. He was named the 1965 and 1969 NCAA Coach of the Year and The Sporting News Coach of the Year in 1965, 1967, and 1969. Winkles was inducted into the ABCA Collegiate Baseball Hall of Fame in 1997. After coaching at ASU, Winkles went on to manage four years in Major League Baseball with the California Angels (1973-1974) and the Oakland Athletics (1977-1978). His No. 1 jersey is honored at Packard Stadium where the field is named in his honor.

Winkles is a graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University, where he became a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity. A righthanded-hitting and -throwing infielder, he played minor league baseball in the Chicago White Sox organization during the 1950s before becoming the Sun Devils' head coach in 1958 and served through 1971. He compiled a winning percentage of .751 (524-173) during his 14 seasons in Tempe.

In 1972, he jumped to Major League Baseball as a coach for the American League California Angels. In 1973, Winkles became manager in Anaheim, succeeding Del Rice. His 1973 club won 79, lost 83 and finished fourth in the AL West. In 1974, after the Angels lost 44 of their first 75 games, Winkles was fired; his permanent successor was Dick Williams.

Winkles then became a coach for the Oakland Athletics; he managed them for parts of the 1977 and 1978 seasons, as he replaced (in 1977) and then was succeeded by (in '78) the same manager: Jack McKeon. The A's were then a struggling outfit in the final throes of the Charlie Finley era. His final managerial record: 170 wins, 213 defeats (.444). Winkles also spent a season, 1976, as a coach for the San Francisco Giants.

A brief coaching stint with the White Sox immediately followed his 1978 firing as A's manager. Then, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Winkles spent several years leading the player development department of the Montreal Expos, when the Expos had one of the most productive farm systems in the game. In 2006, he was inducted into the College Baseball Hall of Fame.