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.

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. Winkles, who also managed two major-league teams, was 90. (born March 11, 1930)

The Arizona State baseball history goes back to at least 1907 although it was not fully supported as a varsity sport until Winkles was hired by then Athletic Director Clyde Smith.

“I forgot to tell you, Bob, you’re going to have to build a stadium,” Winkles said he was informed by Smith upon his arrival.

From that humble beginning -- “Growing up on a farm in Arkansas, you don’t have a chance to be anything but humble,” Winkles said – ASU baseball grew into the school’s most successful major sport largely because of Winkles’ leadership. His role nationally was significant enough for Winkles to be a charter inductee into the College Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.

Rick Monday, Reggie Jackson, Gary Gentry and Paul Ray Powell – all national Players of the Year – were among those on Winkles’ teams as were College Baseball Hall of Famers Sal Bando and Alan Bannister.

“I figure I was the least guy on the team as far as winning a game was concerned,” Winkles said in 2005. “I was tough, but I didn’t care what you think about me while you’re here. I wanted to find out 10 years after you’re gone what you think. We did not have many guys that were not very successful in life after they finished college. They were students first and baseball players third and secondly they were gentlemen.”

Winkles was 524-173 at ASU including four 50-win seasons. In 1972, he moved to professional baseball as a coach then managed the California Angels in 1973 and part of ’74. After being fired by the Angels, he joined the Oakland coaching staff, and the A’s went on to win the 1974 World Series. Winkles managed the A’s in parts of 1977 and ’78. His overall major league managing record was 170-213 and his greater contribution in the pros was with the Montreal Expos as a coach, in player development and as a television analyst through 1993.

Winkles is a member of the American Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame. The baseball field at ASU’s Packard Stadium was named in his honor in 2001.

Perhaps the most famous game of the Winkles’ era, outside of the College World Series, was at Phoenix Municipal Stadium in 1967 when Gentry pitched 15 innings in a 3-2 Western Athletic Conference Southern Division playoff win over Arizona. Gentry threw 208 pitches in what Winkles called “the best performance under sustained pressure I’ve ever seen by a college pitcher,” and ASU continued on the way to its second national championship.

Doug Nurnberg, on the mound at the end of the College World Series title game in 1965, said players called Winkles “the little Napoleon. He took young men with some talent and a lot of aggressive physical energy and got us to apply it to something positive. He got us to overachieve and believe in something past us. That’s tough to do when you don’t have tradition and history.”