His name was Harry X. Martin, and he was my grandfather. A few days ago I discovered this old photograph of him and me - although I had temporarily forgotten about the picture, it is truly my favorite picture from my youth. As I looked at it, vivid memories of my grandfather returned to me.

He was born in Old Orchard Beach, Maine and earned his way through life doing odd jobs -working in the lumbering camps of northern Maine, working as a short order cook in diners, and who knows what else.

We shared our love of baseball as far back as I can remember. Many summer evenings we would sit in the dark on the front porch of his house in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, watch the traffic crawl by on old Route 1, and listen to Red Sox games on his Philco radio. I remember those nights as being a time of peace, contentment and pure unconfined happiness.

He taught me all he knew about baseball. We knew the batting averages of all the players, checked the Boston Globe every morning for the standings, and constantly talked about what it would take to move the Sox out of the basement of the American League. To this day, I can still name the starting lineup of the late fifties Red Sox.

He took me to Red Sox games in Fenway Park where we always sat along the left field line so that we would be close to Ted Williams. He taught me how to keep a score card. Sometimes we got seats so close to the "Green Monster" that I could nearly reach out and touch it. The smell of pop corn, cigarette smoke and chewing gum bring back memories of our excursions to old Fenway. Yes, he was a smoker. In this activity he was a real major leaguer. He smoked Lucky Strike straights - that's right - no filters.

He came to all my ball games from little league to junior high to early high school. I remember one summer evening he drove me to my little league game. No one else from my family was in attendance. For most of the game I sat on the bench pounding my fist into my glove and just waiting for my chance to get into the game. Finally in the last inning and with our team leading by three runs, the coach put me into right field. Anyone who has ever played baseball knows who plays in right field - the weakest player. That's just the way it works. Regardless I was overjoyed to finally get into a game. All we had to do is get the opposing team out for one inning, and we would win the game. Somehow they loaded the bases which brought up their best player. And, you guessed it, he hit a screaming line drive into right field and directly at me. The ball bounced about four times and then flew right between my legs and into the outer reaches of right field. I chased it down and threw it into the infield with all my strength. It was too late though - all four players scored, and we lost the game by a run. I remember that my ears were burning both with embarrassment and anger as I walked off the field without speaking to anyone. I got directly into the passenger seat of my grandfather's Pontiac. I faced away from him on the drive home so that he wouldn't see my tears - but he knew. He said nothing until the next day.

The next morning he showed up at my house and took me out into the back yard. He showed me how to go down onto one knee to block the ball from getting past. All the time he mumbled about how the coach should have taught me this technique. He told that if I did this that never again would a ball get by me, and one never did.

I was on my high school's freshman team in 1961. I was now playing third base, and one cold spring day, we were warming up for a game. My grandfather was in the stands chatting with some other spectators and waiting for the game to start while my coach hit practice grounders to the infielders. When it was my turn, he cracked a hard grounder which took a bad hop and hit me directly in the eye. The ball shattered my glasses, and I was out cold for a few seconds. The next thing I remember was sitting in the doctor's office with my grandfather at my side as the doc picked slivers of glass from my eye with tweezers. As he drove me home, probably trying to figure out what he was going to tell my parents, he said, "Well, you sure didn't let that one get by you."

You may be wondering about his middle initial "X". The story he told was that he came from such a large family that his parents never bothered to give him a middle name. So to give his name a touch of class and a little sophistication, he added an "X" for his middle initial. He always introduced himself as "Harry X. Martin".

Harry X. Martin died in the fall of my sophomore year. He left me much too soon, and I miss him to this day. He never saw me make the varsity baseball team that spring and start at third base through my senior year. I never got a chance to tell him how much he meant to me.

That's not the end of the story though. After he died, my mother and grandmother told me that he was not my real grandfather. For some reason, they had decided to keep from me the fact that that he married my grandmother years after my mother was born. To me though, he'll always be my true grandfather, and the best friend a boy can have.