March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Winkin, colleague edit baseball book> Coaching `bible’ got input from legends

BANGOR – John Winkin lives for baseball. Whether as a player, coach, administrator or author, he has stayed involved with the game for most of the last 60 years.

Winkin, a Fellow in Sports Leadership, director of sports management, sports leadership and physical edcuation and an assistant baseball coach at Husson College in Bangor, shows no signs of slowing down. The 79-year-old recently completed a stint as co-editor and contributor for a new book titled “The Baseball Coaching Bible.”

Winkin and former Arizona coach Jerry Kindall solicited the input of 26 college coaching legends, who share their baseball expertise. The book, published by Human Kinetics, is endorsed by the American Baseball Coaches Association, of which Winkin is a board member.

“To use the word bible, you want it to be the ultimate source,” Winkin said. “We wanted it to be something that everybody would want to turn to, to find out what the best [coaches] did.”

The book is broken into six sections: Coaching Priorities and Principles, Program Building and Management, Creative and Effective Practice Sessions, Individual Skills and Team Strategies, Player Motivation and Leadership, and Off-the-Field Opportunities, Challenges and Pressures.

Winkin and Kindall called upon men with whom they had developed relationships and for whom they had the utmost respect to put together an in-depth look at the elements of coaching baseball.

“We took the guys that were nationally known for each facet and we asked them to write about it,” said Winkin, who explained each coach was encouraged to utilize his own particular style. “It was just as though each one was delivering a clinic on the subject that we asked them to talk about.”

Ron Fraser of Miami, Rod Dedeaux of Southern California, Cliff Gustafson of Texas, Ron Polk of Georgia and Gary Ward of Arizona State are among the respected coaches who contributed to the 370-page book, which is being printed.

The contributing authors have combined for 772 seasons of coaching, having won almost 25,000 games and 50 national championships. Twenty-one of them have been inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame.

“The company wanted it to be the best coaching book written on the game and we’d like to think it came out that way,” Winkin said.

Winkin authored a chapter called Maximizing the Value of Indoor Practice, an area in which he excelled during his 22 years as the head coach of the University of Maine. In 1995, Winkin and former Black Bear assistant coaches Jay Kemble and Mike Coutts published a book and video called “Maximizing Baseball Practice,” which covered that topic.

Winkin, who also writes a regular column for Collegiate Baseball magazine, said he will serve as a liaison between the publisher and the ABCA for future coaching books. The next one will be titled “Baseball Skills and Drills.”

While Winkin enjoys the opportunity to coach at Husson with John Kolasinski, he said he relishes the chance to remain involved with college baseball on a national level while working on the book.

“This is a great way for me to stay involved in the game,” Winkin said. “It’s still a passion. I’m very lucky that opportunities keep coming to be a part of the game, one way or the other.”


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