SEATTLE — The last time I tried to hit against someone who could throw the ball 70 miles per hour from a distance of 43 feet, I was 12 years old. So was the kid from Kennewick who was pitching to me. Except he was 6 feet tall, had a full beard and looked like it was entirely possible that he drove himself to the game.

I struck out.

So naturally, when I had the opportunity to face University of Washington softball pitcher Danielle Lawrie, the NCAA’s national player of the year as well as the Most Outstanding Player of the Women’s College World Series — which her team won this season for the first time in school history — I couldn’t possibly pass it up.

What else was I going to do? Study for finals?

It’s not like I thought I’d hit her. I didn’t. Let me stand in the box while she throws 10 or so fastballs down the middle of the plate, with the guarantee that the next one was going to be in the exact same spot, and maybe, just maybe I could get a piece of it.

But facing one of the best fastpitch hurlers of all time — someone who went 42-8 this season with a 0.97 ERA and 521 strikeouts, and can hit 70 on the radar gun routinely, underhanded, from 43 feet — with her full arsenal?

Nah. Wasn’t going to happen.

I dug in after my uncle, Jim Caple, a senior writer for ESPN.com, whiffed on what seemed to be about 30 or so tosses. He looked worse than Charles Barkley trying to hit a golf ball, except Barkley makes contact most of the time.

After seeing that display, I’d be lying if I said my knees weren’t clattering together a little bit as I stepped into the box. You should know that I’ve covered the Huskies — and Lawrie — for three seasons for the UW student newspaper. And while I haven’t done anything to draw her ire in that time — that I know of, anyway — the thought crept into the back of my mind that, hey, she wouldn’t throw at me just for kicks, would she?

“Remember, I’m still covering you guys next season,” I told Taylor Smith, who was catching. “So I better not get brushed back here.”

She didn’t laugh. Neither did Lawrie, which is normal.

As usual, she wasn’t messing around. If you want to try to hit the best player in the country, you’re going to get her full attention.

Before I get into the gory details of the actual at-bat, I’ve got to say, the main thing I got out of this was an even deeper respect for just how good college hitters are. Lawrie was dominant last season, but she didn’t make hitters look awful like she did on this day.

The fact that most — emphasis on most — college hitters at least stand a chance of making contact against her sheds a little light on just how much talent it takes to play this game. Not that she needed to strike out a bunch of media hacks to prove that, but still.

And when you actually get up there and see how close she is, it’s more than a little intimidating. This was all for fun, but man, as I watched her warm up, I had flashbacks to standing on-deck as a kid while the best pitcher in the league threw scorching fastballs over the catcher’s head to the backstop.

HE’S pitching today? I thought he was out of innings?

Lawrie’s first offering was outside. We were treating this like a normal game situation, so the count was 1-0.

“That was outside, good eye,” she said. That had nothing to do with it. I was taking all the way, just trying to get a sense of how early I needed to start my swing to get a hold of one. Not that it did me a lot of good. I couldn’t see it until it was in the catcher’s mitt.

The next pitch was another laser that made the same “thwack!” sound in Smith’s glove, this one a called strike. Looked high to me. Oh well.

It didn’t really matter, because I swung and missed at the next two, both fastballs, to end my AB. Looking at a video of my cuts, I didn’t look as horrible as some of the scribes who showed up that day. Seattlepi.com’s Jim Moore, a diehard Cougar fan, struck out on three swings that resembled Andy Mattingly waving a frying pan at a soccer player.

Jerry Brewer, a columnist for The Seattle Times, was equally unsuccessful, but at least looked as if he had swung a bat before in his life. The same couldn’t be said for KJR AM’s Dave “Softy” Mahler, who somehow managed to foul one off — one of just three balls that found someone’s bat that day — but otherwise flailed as wildly as Manu Ginobli trying to draw a charge.

Uncle Jim eventually took home the honor of being the only person there to hit the ball in fair territory, but even then only hit a dribbler that the second baseman would have easily converted into a 4-3 putout.

And he needed 40 pitches to do it. Lawrie only needed four to strike me out.

Which is actually one more than most people usually do.

Christian Caple is a Mark Morris High graduate who attends the University of Washington. He can be reached at huskydude30@hotmail.com