How to Protect Your Mailbox from Baseball Bat Destruction

Melanie L. Marten
If you live in a community where young people joyride through the streets playing mailbox baseball, you have probably wasted quite a bit of money buying new mailboxes. Instead of replacing, teach the vandals a lesson and create a mailbox baseball proof mailbox. Protecting your property is inexpensive and quite easy.

What Is Mailbox Baseball?

Mailbox baseball is a game in which destructive teens get in a car and drive around knocking mailboxes off their posts and smashing them with a baseball bat. Some do not use a bat, but instead toss small explosives or fireworks into the mailbox to make it explode or become damaged. Of course, every time this happens, you are forced to spend more money buying a new mailbox and sometimes a new post as well.

How to Build a Safe Mailbox

Begin making your mailbox baseball proof mailbox with a regular plastic mailbox from the hardware store. Also purchase a large sized mailbox designed to hold newspapers and packages. You will also need a stout post and a bag of cement.

Begin by removing the door from the smaller mailbox. You can throw this door away as you will not need it for the finished project. Slip this inside the larger mailbox while it is standing on end. Make sure the door of the large mailbox can close tightly over it. If your mailbox has bolts to attach it to the mailbox post, fit these into the holes in the bottom of the large mailbox.

Then, follow the directions on the bag of cement to mix up a small batch. Keeping the small mailbox straight in the center of the large one, pour in the cement so it fills the cavity between the mailboxes. Allow this to dry thoroughly.

After the cement is dry, it is time to mount your heavy mailbox on the stout post. A four-by-four wooden post works, although a metal on will last longer and is more difficult to destroy. Plant the post deep in the ground, using cement if you wish. Some mailbox posts are now made with a large metal spike that is meant to stick into the ground. This works well if you have very dense soil.

Building a cement-filled mailbox will help stop mailbox baseball attacks. Not only will your mailbox remain undamaged, the disrespectful vandals who participate in this game may think twice about trying it again.

Published by Melanie L. Marten

Melanie Marten is self-taught and self-employed. Besides freelance writing, she dabbles in website design and owns dozens of websites and blogs. Work is squeezed in between parenting two boys, homeschoolin...  View profile

  • Mailbox baseball is a game in which destructive teens drive around knocking mailboxes off their post
  • Begin making your mailbox baseball proof mailbox with a regular plastic mailbox.
  • Building a cement-filled mailbox will help stop mailbox baseball attacks.

6 Comments

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  • kerry-ann4/28/2012

    Thank you so much for the article, it a big help!! we just had our first attack of our mailbox.

  • Citrus Guy4/3/2008

    I used to have this problem until I welded together a steel plate mailbox and mounted it on a piece of telephone pole buried 6 feet in the ground. One morning I came out to get the mail and found the head of a baseball bat lying on the ground. No damage to the mailbox, but I bet that boy's hands STUNG!

  • Opher Ganel3/4/2008

    We have community mailboxes which are about 2 feet by 2 feet by 2 feet, so even if anyone was tempted by this type of vandalism, I suspect they'd have a hard time. The boxes are locked, so no fireworks can be stuffed in. However, given the environment you describe, I hope many of your neighbors read this article and follow through. I can only imagine the desperate frustration of the would-be vandals.

  • Jeanne Marie Kerns2/6/2008

    Great article :-)

  • J P Whickson2/4/2008

    I can just see the bat vibrating like when Wiley Coyote tries to get the roadrunner.

  • Carol Bengle Gilbert2/1/2008

    Melanie, when I saw the headline, I thought this was going to be a humor piece about your kid's baseball bat and your mailbox and their accidental rendez-vous.

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