UNION TWP. | I knew she was good -- really, really good -- and I wasn't going to underestimate her.

My hope was that Wheeler pitcher Lanay Parks might make that mistake of me. My hope was maybe, just maybe, the sophomore ace wouldn't take this seriously.

"You're going to take it easy on me, right?" I ask her as I nervously dig into the batter's box.

"Nope," she says.

Oh boy.

Now Parks is glaring in as she takes her sign from catcher Mackenzie Ness. Yes, she's actually calling pitches. I guess Parks is not going to just feed me batting-practice fastballs, as I had hoped.

Parks rocks back, loads up and then explodes forward in one fluid motion. The pitch is high and outside, well out of the strike zone, but I can't lay off (darn riseball).

Whiff. My swing catches nothing but air.

Of the few things I know for certain, this is one: I am a reasonably athletic individual, especially for a sportswriter. There's a reason us media sorts are covering sports, not still playing them.

At 6-foot-4, 180 pounds, I have a basketball build. But baseball was my best sport in high school.

My junior year in 2002, I hit around .380 for the Westminster (Mo.) Christian Academy Wildcats and at one point led the St. Louis area in batting. (That point may or may not have come a week into the season, after maybe 10 at-bats and a few bloop hits. But still, for a moment -- a very fleeting moment -- I was the top hitter in a metropolitan area of more than 2 million, and yes, I'm sure somewhere my mom still has the papers to prove it.)

My senior year, I hit a walk-off home run. (OK, so it was the only home run of my baseball career. But, by golly, it was still a walk-off).

I may have lost a step since then. My bat may be a shade slower. But I'm not a total slouch. Not yet, at least. I shoot hoops every now and then. I'm in a slow-pitch softball league.

Of course, those skills don't necessarily translate toward hitting off one of the hardest throwing and most intimidating softball pitchers in the area.

So in preparation for taking 10 swings against Parks, I went to the batting cages to try to speed up my swing. I even solicited the advice of the Valparaiso University program's all-time hits leader, Shannon Robinson, who told me to shorten my swing and concentrate on Parks' release point when she is delivering the pitch.

For all the above reasons, I expected something better than complete failure, utter emasculation and total humiliation from my showdown with Parks, who this season is 19-4 with an ERA well under 1.00 and (gulp) 242 strikeouts.

That's another advantage I figured to have. I've seen her pitch several times in the past two seasons. I know her stats, her delivery, her pitches. I know she throws one of the most devastating riseballs in the area -- a pitch most hitters can't help but swing at, a pitch most hitters swing right through.

They say a softball pitcher who throws 60 mph from 40 feet away gives you roughly as much reaction time -- less than half a second -- as a 90-mph Kerry Wood fastball. But if Parks really wants to bring it -- and apparently, she does -- I have even less time to react.

The 15-year-old right-hander has been clocked as high as 64 mph. Parks' first pitch couldn't have been much slower than that.

So Ness unknowingly does me a favor when her next sign calls for a change-up. I couldn't catch up to Parks' riseball, but I make solid contact with her change-up, lining it into center field.

With no one in the outfield to retrieve the ball, which hits the fence on a couple hops, we have to wait for Wheeler coach Tracy Seibert to track down a couple extras. Turns out, there's a reason Parks brought just one ball with her to the circle.

"We didn't think you'd hit one," Ness said.

Neither did I. But this changes things. A wave of confidence comes over me. Maybe I underestimated myself. Maybe I overestimated Parks.

Lanay who? I can hit this girl.

Or not.

Parks doesn't make the mistake of throwing me another change-up, and I don't make solid contact again. The next pitch, Parks reverts to her bread and butter, a high riseball that I foul off to the right.

Parks throws her riseball as fast as her fastball. These are the two main pitches in her arsenal, and as I soon find out, they complement each other nicely.

After flailing at a couple riseballs, I finally see a fastball. Indeed, it is fast. But it is also moving, tailing in on my hands. Tied up, I swing through it.

And that, in a nutshell, is how the rest of our showdown plays out. Parks getting me to chase a riseball up in the zone. Parks coming back with a low fastball. Parks making mincemeat of me.

In 10 swings, I whiff five times. Twice I foul the pitch off to the right. Of the three pitches I actually put in play, one is a weak grounder to short (or where the shortstop would be), one is a chopper off the plate that the second baseman would have handled, and the other, of course, is my one solid liner up the middle.

After Parks blows a riseball by me on my final swing, I ask for her analysis.

"You did alright," she says.

My hunch is she was just being nice. But compared to how most batters fare against her, I don't feel so bad.