A Guide to the Best of Southern California : ALL-AMERICAN TRADITIONS : Playing Ball . . .

There’s something miraculous about batting cages. Really. Not to sound extreme, but it’s wonderfully amazing that they exist in these litigious times. Here you have people protected by a mere plastic helmet defending themselves with an aluminum bat against a rattling Rube Goldberg-style machine that hurls balls moving faster--up to 82 m.p.h.--than freeway traffic!

One of the few such strike zones left is the Glendale Batting Cage. A 15-minute session in one of its seven cages costs $6.50. The management recently switched from polyurethane balls to less noisy hard-rubber ones to soothe the neighbors, but it has hardly changed the experience. Kids think it’s real-life Nintendo. And grown-ups fight to see who will be the first to wrench their back into spasms while swinging at outside fastballs.

Glendale Batting Cage, 620 E. Colorado Blvd., Glendale; (818) 243-2363.