A number of contributors have written about being in "the zone."

Many athletes have attributed their peak performances to this mysterious condition. A quarterback whose passes appear almost miraculously accurate in one game. A basketball player who seemingly can't miss the hoop for part or all of one contest. A batter to whom the baseball looks as big as a pumpkin as it floats leisurely up to the plate.

This is a real phenomenon. I've heard or seen enough examples of it to be convinced. And in fact I've experienced it myself. It doesn't just happen for one game. You've heard of players having a "career year." The hitter whose batting average jumps 30 or 40 or 50 points. The running back whose average yards per carry doubles. The miler who breaks four minutes and then goes out and does it again. Yes, they've each been in a zone for a full season.

I was "in a zone" for two months in the summer of 1950. I was 15 years old and a member of a baseball team so humble that we didn't even have a name, let alone official standing of any sort. And uniforms? Don't make me laugh! We all just loved the game, loved playing - we wouldn't have swapped our battered mitts, muddy spikes and dinged-up bats for the world.

Everybody was busy with typical teenage-kid stuff, but we managed to play a fairly regular schedule of two games a week, Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. Our opponents were other kids a lot like us. There were no official coaches or managers. We all self-selected our positions and lineups.

I swung a good bat and had a strong arm, but I was pretty slow afoot and not exactly an agile glove man, so at various times I pitched, caught or played right field. Mainly I pitched. Typically, I took the mound (actually, a roughly circular patch of bare earth in the middle of the diamond) on Saturdays and either caught or played outfield on Wednesdays.

At the beginning of the season I had one pitch: a mediocre fastball with little or no movement on it. But we had a strong team and we won the first game I pitched. Don't ask me the score. Nobody wrote it down, and we're talking about a season 64 years ago.

But being a winning pitcher was really exciting, and I decided to work on my stuff every chance I got. First I managed to get my arm speed up. I have no idea how fast my so-called fastball actually was. Speed guns? None of us kids had ever heard of such a thing.

We talked baseball at every opportunity, memorized the rosters and stats of every team in the majors. Of course, that was easier to do in 1950. There were eight teams in the National League and eight teams in the American League, and they were in the cities where God had placed them and would stay there till the end of the world.

Once I was happy with my fastball, I discovered that I had a change-up already. Just throw the thing the same way, just not as hard. Wow! Now I was a two-speed pitcher.

So I started to work on a breaking ball. I was a right-hander, and I could get a break on the ball by twisting my arm from elbow to fingertips as I released the ball. Twisting toward the center of my body produced a curve. Twisting away from my body produced a screwball.

Trouble was, throwing the screwball made my elbow ache for a couple of days after the throwing session, so I abandoned that. Still, I now had three pitches, and my team kept on winning the games I pitched.

By the last week in August, I'd started eight games, pitched eight complete games, and had a record of eight wins and no losses. The last game of the season was coming up and it was a Saturday game, meaning that it would be my turn to take the mound.

We were the home team and in the top of the first the other side went down one-two-three. I was focused on my pitching, so I didn't keep close track of our own turns at bat, but as I recall we ran up a fair number of runs.

As for the opposition, I struck out some batters - I have no idea how many - and got lots of ground balls. Lots and lots of ground balls. In fact, by the top of the ninth the other side had yet to get a base runner. We did have an umpire who called balls and strikes and all other plays, but walks were almost unknown in our games. Everybody wanted to hit the ball.

I do remember that the first batter in the top of the ninth hit a routine grounder and our shortstop threw him out. The second batter came to the plate. We actually had a home plate - talk about luxury! He was a right-handed batter and I had a feeling that he was going to swing late and hit a grounder to the right side of the infield for a scratch single.

That's what happened. Goodbye perfect game. Goodbye no-hitter.

The next batter came up and hit into a game-ending double play.

I think I read somewhere that the great Persian rug-makers always made sure to include one false stitch in each of their creations, lest they offend God by creating something perfect, for only God may create perfection.

I know that some ballplayers have thrown perfect games, and as far as I know God did not smite them for their insolence. But I had a perfect season, nine wins and no losses, and an almost perfect game at the end of the streak.

That winter I was in a minor bicycle accident and I broke my arm. We went to the hospital and the bone was set and they put my arm in a cast. It healed pretty well and I even tried out for my high school baseball team, but my elbow hurt so badly after the first session that I had to give it up.

After that, I never pitched again. At least, not until I got to throw out the first pitch at an Oakland A's game in 2013.

Anytime you want to talk about being in a zone, or if you ever encounter skeptics who doubt that this is a real phenomenon, send 'em to me. They'll get an earful about my miracle summer of 1950.

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