I just read this little piece about a new study that shows that by throwing a ball slowly to your kid to hit you aren’t helping them at all.  It appears that kids’ brains aren’t wired for slow motion, so by throwing the ball faster you make it easier for them to hit.

"When
you throw something slowly to a child, you think you’re doing them a
favor by trying to be helpful," said Terri Lewis, professor of
psychology at McMaster University. "Slow balls actually appear
stationary to a child."

Add a little speed to the pitch, Lewis and her colleagues suggest, and the child is able to judge its speed more accurately.

"Our brain has very few neurons that deal specifically with slow
motion and many neurons that deal with faster motion," Lewis said.
"Even adults are worse at slow speeds than they are at faster speeds."

To my kids: sorry for setting your baseball careers back who-knows-how-long.

Oh, and I guess this helps explain the success of the old Eephus pitch and my amazingly low slow-pitch softball batting average.