'Want to play mailbox baseball? Fine it will cost you one window': Mailbox vandals and their vehicle lose to reinforced mailbox

Author image for Brad Dickson
Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Mar 1, 2024 10:00 AM EST

Mailbox baseball—the act of hitting an unsuspecting mailbox with a baseball bat out of a moving vehicle—is a niche yet important part of the mythos of American life, a relic of Americana that lives on in classic coming-of-age stories and family folklore. If you've ever poked and prodded an older member of your family who grew up as a bored child back in the days when kids and teens roamed wildly unaccounted for, you've probably heard some of these stories. Beyond that, if you're living in a rural community, you've probably even heard of these hi-jinx taking place or been on the receiving end of a game of mailbox baseball yourself. 

Occasionally, these stories pop up online, usually in the form of victims of repeated attempts on their mailboxes attempting to reinforce their mail receptacles to unbelievable levels of toughness and indestructibility, to the detriment of the unsuspecting bat wielder and their vehicle. This thread was one such tale and the plethora of other shared stories in the comments made it a great read that was worth sharing.

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    261 260 U..S. 259
    via Oleksandr Gamaniuk
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    r/pettyrevenge. 11 hr. ago stackedbarrels Want to play mailbox baseball? Fine it will cost you one window. My sister lives in a more rural area and has recently been plagued with having her mailbox smashed in twice in one month. Someone was playing mailbox baseball and she was one of the victims. She asked for my help and was worried about staying within the law to protect herself. I told her that we could figure something out so I went to Home Depot and purchased two identical steel
    via stackedbarrels
  • 03
    mailboxes, the traditional kind with the rounded top. I took one mailbox and glued a layer of 1/16" foam underlayment to the inside. I filled it with concrete making sure to add the appropriate rebar with a curved handle sticking out of the end. Once everything was set I cut off the outer mailbox shell and used a torch to burn off the foam underlayment still stuck to the concrete. What was left was a slightly undersized concrete plug that would perfectly fit in the second mailbox and that could
    via stackedbarrels
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    You see my sister is afraid of snakes, by inserting the concrete plug into the mailbox at night it would give her the peace of mind that a snake can't into her mailbox. I installed the second mailbox, informed my sister how the anti-snake concrete plug worked, and explained that the best time to put it in the mailbox would be at night. Strangely enough one morning there was a mark on her new mailbox and a bunch of small glass pieces along the road. Hypothetically speaking it was the kind of glas
    via stackedbarrels
  • 05
    MOPPETT331 ● 10h ago My stepsisters boyfriend was fond of mailbox baseball way back when. He learned. 4 1K ↓ Came up against one of these retrofitted mailboxes and shattered several bones in his hand. Reply Share :
    via u/stackedbarrels
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    itcheyness 10h ago Oh wow, that's a great way for keeping a mailbox snake free! 4 1.2K ↓ Reply ↑ Share
    via u/stackedbarrels
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    LaTommysfan 10h ago ● My brother had a friend with an old step van, they would run down mailboxes. Now when the postal inspectors showed up at my parents house, it was no longer fun. ↑ 301 + Reply ↑ Share
    via u/stackedbarrels
  • 08
    10h ago racincowboy9380 We grew up in a rural area as well. We took a large mailbox and a standard size filled the void with concrete. Put it on a swiveling mount with a handle welded on the back facing away from the road to take and spin the mailbox sideways when we would go get the mail as we lived on a very busy highway with no shoulder. It also worked if someone hit it with a bat would spin around and hammer a hole in the door as they went by lol. As well as ting their hands if they had an a
    via u/stackedbarrels
  • 09
    Overall-Tailor8949 10h ago Many many moons ago we lived in a rural part of the state and had similar things happening, along with the occasional run over by a lifted truck. My dad got one of the over sized mailboxes, used a standard one for the core and filled it in. Ended up with a regular (interior) mailbox that had about 2" of reinforced concrete around it. This was mounted to a 6 foot long pivoting pole that was in turn mounted to a steel i-beam sunk in concrete about 6 feet away from the ed
    via u/stackedbarrels
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    10h ago DisneyBuckeye Love it!! Poor snakes, nowhere to live.... 2 179 + Reply ↑ Share
    via u/stackedbarrels
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    Pristine_Parking5202 I'm rural, and while I've never had my mailbox smashed, I did have a very lazy postal worker (99.9% positive she'd open our Netflix DVDs and watch them before we got them; back when we first moved in). She'd bend people's mailboxes back so she could more easily put in mail from her car, but it would also let rain get in. Well, a few years ago, someone STOLE our mailbox. It was one of those plastic Rubbermaid ones, pried it and made off with it, nails just sticking up from th
    via u/stackedbarrels
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    8h ago My father did this same thing and got a fine from the post office and a visit from the police. The idiots who hit the mailbox with a bat broke an arm or some . It was like a $25 fine or some and no legal trouble, at the tradeoff that his mailbox never had that happen again. 61 凸 Reply ↑ Share dwho422
    via u/stackedbarrels
  • 13
    No-Term-1979 8h ago After buying my house, I was putting in a new mailbox and post. The neighbor drives up, and he is talking about how some people don't respect others' mailboxes and like to drive over them. I told him the first one is on me. The next one won't be as forgiving. 18 months later, I am still rocking the original post and mailbox. ↑ 49 ↓ Reply ↑ Share
    via u/stackedbarrels
  • 14
    pacifistpotatoes • 8h ago ● When we bought our house 16 years ago, I noticed our mailbox was made of some very thick, very heavy duty metal. It also would not move if you tried to pull on the base, so I assume some kind of concrete post under the ground. Its painted nicely, has our house numbers on it etc. One day I went to get the mail & noticed it was crooked just a bit. Then noticed some of the nice yellow paint missing from the nice. Then noticed the ground was covered in broken bits of what
    via u/stackedbarrels
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    Glittering Code_4311 10h ago ● Read about the person that filled ballons with paint and formed it around the mailbox, it was a party decoration I am sure ↑ 77 ↓ Reply ↑ Share
    via u/stackedbarrels
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    Important-Lime-7461 We live in a rural area in the mountains, our road is about 1 1/2 miles long, about 40 houses or so, one summer there were kids playing mailbox baseball, I had a metal box and it was smashed. A neighbor up the road was outside Cele 4th of July lighting off fireworks and drinking when the mailbox smashers passed by his place, he tossed a 1/4 stick fireworks and it landed in the windshield wiper well. Next thing windshield was shattered and on their laps, they took off and have
    via u/stackedbarrels
  • 17
    9h ago My dad was a little redneck as a kid and when theres nothing to do in the 50s he and his little brother thought it was a brilliant idea to get M80s and blow up mailboxes on the street. They got caught. How? Didnt think to blow up their own mailbox. Grounded an entire summer for that stunt. 4 70 + LittlestEcho Reply Share ...
    via u/stackedbarrels

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americana mailbox revenge petty revenge pro revenge malicious compliance great stories revenge-stories petty-revenge-reddit revenge-stories-reddit
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