So, Zach Booker, your grandfather, Jack McKeon managed the Florida Marlins to a surprising berth in the National League Championship Series against the Chicago Cubs.

This is the same grandfather, who until he was hired in May, saw almost every game and even batting practice in your final year of high school.

The same grandfather who’s thinking of getting a condo in town to see you play on the UNCW baseball team for just a few precious weeks sandwiched either side of the Major League season.

The same grandfather that’s been a best friend since you were in diapers.Your next door neighbor.

Are you nervous?

“We’ve been through this before,” he said evenly.

After all, his father, Greg Booker, pitched for the San Diego Padres and was pitching coach when the squad reached the World Series in 1998. Both of his maternal uncles, Kasey McKeon (special assistant to the General Manager of the Colorado Rockies) and Kelly McKeon, have been active in baseball.

Since he couldn’t get down to Miami for the Oct. 10’s game (the Seahawk baseball team worked out on the Saturday and Sunday of Fall Break), the playoffs mean quality time with the family.

“We’ll all watch it together,” Booker said. “Just my family. Just my mom, dad, brothers, sisters.”

The whole family’s been riding one of the better feel-good baseball stories of the last 10 years. The Marlins, struggling in May, plucked McKeon out of retirement and into possibly the biggest success of his career.

And while it’s exciting to see his grandfather in the NLCS (and eyeing a slew of Manager of the Year awards), one wonders if it can compete for sheer excitement with traveling with the Padres five years ago during their World Series trip, acting as bat boy, shagging fly balls in batting practice and hanging out in the clubhouse before a big game.

Oh, and getting taped to a chair by pitchers Trevor Hoffman, Donnie Wall and Kevin Walker.

But this year is incredibly special. It’s just a different feeling than 1998.

“He’s been wanting this for 50, 60 years,” Booker said. “And this time it involves everybody in the family.”

And while he’s enjoying his grandfather’s success, he’s taking it in stride. He’s got many things on his plate, such as getting adjusting to college life with its academics, social life and being a pitcher on the UNCW baseball team.

But it all comes back to baseball, even if it’s a mellow form. He’s enjoys it.

And that’s like the signature old hat he wears. His father’s old minor-league hat, that got dilapidated over the summer. The brown Walla Walla, Wash. cap with the bill’s stuffing knocked out.

“It we didn’t have baseball, I don’t know what we’d do,” Booker said. “We’d probably go crazy.”