Bobby Winkles, who as Arizona State’s first varsity baseball coach laid the foundation for one of the nation’s most prominent college programs, died Friday, March 17, 2020.
Winkles’ teams won three College World Series titles in his 13 seasons, and he was inducted as a charter member of the College Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.
Winkles gave up minor league baseball to start his coaching career at ASU in the 1958-59 school year, just as ASU was becoming a university. He took the Sun Devils to Omaha, Neb., for their first College World Series in 1964 and won the national championship in 1965, ’67 and ’69.