Merry Christmas, Harvey Martin, and thanks for the gift.

Growing up in Texas, you always had your Cowboys team. At least everybody I knew did. The players might not have played together and could even come from different eras. But it was your team, the men that made up the America's Team of your dreams.

Harvey Martin was co-MVP of the 1978 Super Bowl and a four-time Pro Bowl player.(AP)

Martin was near the top of mine, the right defensive end playing next to Bob Lilly. Ed "Too Tall" Jones is playing on the left end, Randy White rounds out an amazingly balanced group.

The rest of the defense is behind them, but those four are the best part of the Cowboys defense of my mind, the heart of the greatest unit that ever played.

Harvey Martin's heart stopped Monday at 51. A man that made a living of mayhem on the football field saw pancreatic cancer wreck his body.

Still a part of my team, he is out of our lives.

Born and raised in Dallas, Martin was the easy smile, the quick laugh, the local-boy-done-good. And he played it for all it was worth.

The Cowboys were called a cold business in his day, running calculated risks through computers on draft day. Martin was taken in the third round in 1973 out of a program -- East Texas State University -- most people outside the state had never heard of.

Coach Tom Landry might not show any emotion, but Martin would, and his emotions looked like a lot of fun.

He was proud to have starred first at South Oak Cliff High School, then East Texas State and finally with the Cowboys. He wasn't so proud of some of the things that came after his playing days were over.

Struggles with domestic violence and substance abuse never jibed with the man seen on camera, or interviewed in later years about his career. But they're there for the record.

Martin was a great interview and still a big man the last time I saw him. And he was humble about his accomplishments, as if a championship title, a Super Bowl co-MVP, 114 career sacks and 20 in a season weren't that big a deal.

He never had a sack dance. "Everybody saw what I did," he told me in 1997.

He never held out for more money. "It was a different time, they paid you to play. Play. That's what I did."

Memory can't recall if he ever stood over a quarterback and so much as shook his head in disgust.

What he did have was more sacks than any Cowboy before or since and the honor of being one of the men who made fans -- and eventually the NFL -- pay attention to the sack as a meaningful statistic. Landry called him the best pass rusher in Cowboys history.

Martin had regrets, some large some small. One of the small ones he lamented in an interview with The Dallas Morning News.

"It never happened to me," Martin told the Morning News about never scoring a touchdown. "Closest I came was with a fumble. I got tackled by the quarterback, and everybody laughed at me. Both teams."

Merry Christmas, Harvey. Nobody's laughing at you now. But I smiled today when I thought of you on my team.