John W. Winkin Jr. (July 24, 1919 – July 19, 2014) was an American baseball coach, scout, broadcaster, journalist and collegiate athletics administrator. Winkin led the University of Maine Black Bears baseball team to six College World Series berths in an 11-year span. In 2007, at age 87, he was the oldest active head coach in any collegiate sport at any NCAA level. In all, 92 of his former players wound up signing professional baseball contracts. Elected to 11 different halls of fame, including the National College Baseball Hall of Fame in 2013, he finished his college baseball coaching career in 2008 with 1,043 total wins, which ranks 52nd all-time among NCAA head coaches. He died in 2014.
Winkin was born July 24, 1919 in Englewood, New Jersey, the son of Cora Senner Winkin and John W. Winkin Sr. His mother was a physician. His father was a linguistics professor at Columbia University.
Winkin attended Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood.
Winkin attended Duke University, where he played baseball for head coach Jack Coombs as a 5-foot 6-inch left-handed hitting center fielder. He also played basketball and soccer and was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity.
Following graduation Winkin joined the U.S. Navy as an ensign, spending 56 months at sea in the Pacific theatre and rising to the rank of lieutenant commander.
Winkin served as one of 158 crew aboard the USS McCall, a destroyer assigned to protect aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. After delivering Marines to Wake Island, the fleet was returning to port at Pearl Harbor on the evening of December 6, 1941. However, the McCall was unable to make it in because of hazardous weather. If not for that storm, the ship would have been berthed next to the USS Arizona when Japanese forces attacked the next morning. Instead, Winkin and his crewmates saw the entire attack unfold from the decks of the McCall in the waters outside the harbor.
Following his military discharge, Winkin returned to New Jersey. His college coach Coombs had suggested the coaching profession to Winkin, but he pursued a career in journalism, later becoming a founding editor of Sport Magazine. He was hired for a broadcasting position with the New York Yankees, where he hosted the first pre-game baseball TV show in the nation alongside Mel Allen and Curt Gowdy. Winkin became friends with Joe DiMaggio, and he chose to wear jersey #5 at each of his college coaching stints in honor of the Yankee legend. Winkin also made his first foray into coaching, becoming manager of the American Legion baseball team in Englewood.
In 1949 Winkin became head football coach at Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood, where he was also a baseball coach and history teacher. To appease his parents, Winkin resumed studies at Columbia University, earning his Master's and Doctorate in education. His doctoral thesis was on the statistical probabilities of the double play.
Among the rival schools Winkin coached against was St. Cecilia's, also in Englewood, where the head coach was Vince Lombardi. Winkin and the future Green Bay Packers legend became close friends and bridge partners.
In 1954, Coombs recommended Winkin to his alma mater, Colby College. Winkin spent the next 20 seasons as baseball coach. As an administrator he served as president of the Eastern College Athletic Conference, and also as a vice president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Winkin was named National Baseball Coach of the Year in 1965. During his tenure he also served as an area scout for the Boston Red Sox for several years. He also developed a friendship with Ted Williams, and Winkin coached at Williams' summer youth baseball camps in Lakeville, Massachusetts, for 15 years.
Two of Winkin's players at Colby, Norm Gigon and Ed Phillips, went on to play in the major leagues.
As athletic director, Winkin hired Dick Whitmore as men's basketball coach in 1970. Whitmore compiled a 637–341 record and a .651 winning percentage over his 40-year career, and retired in March 2011 with the seventh-highest all-time victory total in NCAA Division III men's basketball.
In 1973–74, Winkin's final year at Colby, he served as president of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. He compiled a record of 301–202–5 over his baseball coaching tenure with the school.
Winkin became head baseball coach at the University of Maine in 1975, taking over for Jack Butterfield, who had left to become the head coach of South Florida. His arrival spawned an era of great success for the Black Bears that included six College World Series appearances and a third-place finish. Winkin's teams, composed largely of players from Maine and the other five New England states, proved to be formidable competition for major southern and western universities that had substantially larger budgets and fielded superior talent.
Maine's success on the national stage was even more surprising given the state's long winters that often resulted in snow-covered ground well into April and muddy fields in May. Conditions often limited the Black Bears outdoor on-campus baseball activity to less than two months, while players for colleges in warm-weather climates were able to train outdoors year-round. Maine, like other northern schools, would head south early in the season, playing multiple weeks worth of games on the road against top-caliber teams. Winkin also pioneered an innovative system of indoor baseball training and workouts, which he detailed in one of his books.
In 1975, Winkin's first season, the Black Bears set a school record with 25 wins and matched the team's best-ever .750 winning percentage, but lost in the NCAA regionals. Senior right-hander Fred Howard, a Butterfield recruit, went on to pitch in the majors with the Chicago White Sox.
In 1976 the Black Bears won a new team record 29 games and earned their first CWS berth under Winkin. It was also the school's first appearance in Omaha since 1964, when Butterfield led Maine to three wins and a third-place finish. Following a 3–2 loss to Eastern Michigan, Winkin's team knocked off heavily favored Auburn (9–8) and Washington State (6–3) before being eliminated by Arizona State (7–0). The 1976 team included future major leaguer Bert Roberge and future Clemson baseball coach Jack Leggett.