In addition to providing recreational enjoyment, batting cages and miniature golf courses are excellent places to prepare children for a future filled with curveballs and malevolent windmills. Foster future success with today's Groupon: for $9, you get one round of mini golf for two children (15 and younger) and two adults, or 30 minutes in the batting cage (an $18 value for either) at Batter's Box Family Fun Center in Milton.

Housed in a bright blue barn, Batter's Box Family Fun Center is a flourishing farm of batting cages and miniature-golf challenges. Two adults ($5 each) and two children ($4 each for children younger than 15) may take on tropical-themed Adventure Island, which packs full-sized athletic competition into 18 scaled-down holes. As miniature golfers move their teensy feet throughout the greens, they are peppered with putting obstacles that include fountains, erupting volcanoes, and the shipwreck of the S.S. Minnow.

Aspiring Hank Aarons can opt for a half-hour in one of the fun center's 10 batting cages, where softballs and baseballs bravely catapult themselves at offending bats. Having chosen between softballs and baseballs, batters can pick their cage based on its pitch speed, which ranges from a slow softball arch to a cheetah-aping 70-mph fastball.