If anybody was appropriately named, it was a gifted young catcher from Stearns High School in Millinocket who became the first athlete to accept a grant-in-aid from the University of Maine.

Mark Armstrong was his name.

He went on to play in the College World Series his freshman year and eventually captained the Bears his senior year.

After seeing spot duty as a freshman, Armstrong improved steadily. He hit .155 his sophomore year, .260 as a junior and .276 as a senior. He was an All-Yankee Conference and All-New England first team pick his senior year and signed a free-agent contract with the Oakland A’s.

“God, could he throw,” said former Maine coach John Winkin, who considers Armstrong one of the three best throwing catchers he coached at Maine along with Colin Ryan and Kregg Jarvais. “He was very quick for a big guy and had good instincts. He loved the game. The pitchers liked throwing to him. He was a great kid.”

Winkin said a hitch in Armstrong’s swing hampered him offensively until he eliminated it his junior year.

These days, the 40-year-old Armstrong is the chief executive officer for the Lodi (Cal.) Grape Festival. He and his wife, the former Teresa Trafton of Bangor, live in neighboring Woodbridge with their four children: Sarah, 10; Elizabeth, 8; Patrick, 6; and Joseph, 4.

He describes his job as being “like the guy who runs [Bangor’s] Bass Park [complex]. We put on a lot of different events. We have a 20-acre facility and we have one of California’s most successful fairs.

“I love what I’m doing and the best part of my job is I get to spend a lot of time with my family. I can enjoy coaching them and being with them. I can watch my kids grow up,” said Armstrong.

He previously worked at prominent sports facilities in Phoenix, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore.

In looking back on his career at Maine, Armstrong said, “I had great times at Maine. But I had no idea how unprepared I was for that level of competition. My freshman year was kind of a blur. We had some pretty intimidating athletes on that team like Jack Leggett and John Dumont. You’d be hard-pressed to find a Maine team as talented as that one.”

Maine went 2-2 in the 1976 College World Series.

“I was proud of the fact that after having such a tough start at Maine, I felt I became one of the best catchers in the country by my senior year. I worked at it and became a decent hitter,” said Armstrong, who felt his career would have been even more productive if Bear assistant Stump Merrill hadn’t left after his freshman year.

Armstrong enjoyed seeing other parts of the country and discovered “that I really liked the West Coast.”

Playing in the CWS was a thrill but Armstrong said the most memorable event of his career came when his 1975 Old Town-Orono American Legion team, coached by Merrill, overcame an opening-game loss to reach the Northeast Regional championship game in Quincy, Mass., where it lost to the host Morrisette Post team 4-2 in 11 inings. The Twins had beaten Morrisette 6-4 in the previous game.

“That far overshadowed what I did at Maine,” said Armstrong, who hit .396 for the 21-2 Twins. “Stump was a great coach. That was my first exposure to real baseball.”

He also fondly remembers playing in a college all-star game in Fenway Park and having Leggett tell him his freshman year, “if I continued to work hard, I’d eventually be the best catcher in the league. My senior year, Jack was coaching Vermont and I the best series of my career against him. I had a couple of homers. Jack came up afterward and said, `See what I told you.’ ”