"Mailbox Baseball"

[Robert Coats]

From a gifted writer and former co-worker...found this gem while cleaning out an old drive:

11-Dec-90 13:16:36
Sb: Mailbox Baseball
To: All
Some vandal has smashed my mailbox, and my neighbor said it looks like the result of "Mailbox Baseball." Is this some local game, or what?
Thanks,
WR

There is one reply!

Sb: Mailbox Baseball
Fm: Shel Hall 76701,103
To: W.R. Holdsworth 79705,3070
WR-
Mailbox Baseball is as old as teen-age driving privileges, and is played at varying levels of expertise all over the nation.

One of the finest players ever to grace the sport went to high school with me, here in Atlanta. Al LaFarge. Perhaps you have heard of his exploits. It was he who first perfected the "Lancelot" variation, whereby a short 2x4 is propped, lance-wise, against the car's window frame, projecting forward and slightly outward, allowing the full inertia of the automobile to be transmitted the length of the 2x4 as the free end of the lumber came into solid contact with the mailbox.

Before LaFarge, the standard play had been to lean from the passenger window of a chauffeured sedan, swinging a friction-taped Louisville Slugger at the standard bent-tin-on-a-stick suburban mailbox, but the all-brick mailbox soon become the bane of the bat-wielding proles.

LaFarge's new technique worked even with the all-brick items; those it did not decapitate it uprooted. No mason's handiwork is meant to survive a direct hit from a 1963 Chevrolet Impala 327 SS.

Big Al met his match late one night, however, when he attempted the never-before-achieved Lancelot Trifecta, drawing a bead on a masonry mailbox he had twice demolished that same month.

His team scouts, however, had failed to notice that during the most recent rebuilding the mailbox had been reinforced with four twelve- foot lengths of 132-pound-per-running-yard mainline railroad rail.

The installation of the rails had required the services of a pile-driver, since somewhat over seven feet of each rail was inserted into the firm Georgia clay underlying the property of the aggrieved homeowner.

The brick was merely veneer. Camouflage. Show business.

Set the scene: the car, each of its five passenger positions occupied by a smart-ass white boy utterly devoid of social conscience; the lance, tucked knight-wise under the arm of the primary primate, one end butted against the car, the other weaving slightly as Al aligned it with .... the mailbox, an irresistible target in pristine brick and virgin mortar, beckoning in the moonlight.

Just before the inevitable impact, the aforesaid homeowner, standing in his front yard at the end of a seventy-five-foot length of electric-lawnmower extension cord, pressed the trigger on his trusty Kodak super-eight home-movie camera, bringing into play the triple floodlights atop the camera, bathing the scene in light.

LaFarge never wavered, his concentration was absolute.

The result was as you might imagine; the 2x4, caught between the massively-reinforced masonry and the rump-sprung Chevrolet, exploded into organic shrapnel as it ripped the passenger's door, and Al, completely out of the car.

The resulting lateral displacement of the trajectory of the mortally-wounded Impala resulted in its inebriated and incompetent driver's steering starboard when port was required.

The first roll ejected the other student-athletes from the car, and, after an extensive series of aerial arabesques, the remains of the empty automobile came to rest, inverted, in a shower of red-plastic taillight fragments, oaths and empty beer cans.

The homeowner's movie film was back from the drugstore about the time the doctors got the last of the splinters out of Al's armpit, and it proved that a picture is still worth a thousand words. Among those requesting prints of this cult hit were the mason, the postmaster, and the district attorney.

His car demolished, Al feared he would have to walk to our exclusive private school, but the fear was unfounded; he and his henchmen were summarily ejected. Al's short appearance in Federal court earned him a year's probation, and his parents were still buying new mailboxes months later.

So, yes, I'd say we know about Mailbox Baseball hereabouts.

-Shel

Copyright (c) 1990, Sheldon T. Hall

[M.D. Holloway]

I knew a guy from the next town (actually ran against him in track), while joy-riding one night, he would lean out the car window and smack the yield or stop signs. One night the driver got too close and in 1981, Scott Kelley of East Lyme Ct was decapitated by a sign.

[flipper35]

People up the county road from us where I grew up would build a snowman and a snowmobile would run it down. After the second one was lost they put a fence post in the ground first, then built the snowman around it. They found out who kept going into the yard and smashing the snowman.

[GH85Carrera]

Right before I married my now wife her mailbox was mowed down by some local teenagers that smashed an entire block of mailboxes in her neighborhood. My father in law was much like me in that if something needed to be repaired or replaced it should be over engineered and be designed to last for a long time.

He went to a local friend that worked at an oilfield pipeline yard. They cut off a piece of heavy walled drilling pipe that was likely 10 inches in diameter. He has a power post hole digger he brought from the farm and he dug a deep hole, filled it with a lot of concrete and put a mailbox on top. Done.

They guy that lived across the street remained a friend. He said that just a few years ago in the middle of the night there was a loud THWANG! and by the time he got outside the driver had run off. A car was wrapped around the unbent mailbox pole. Of course the punk kid driver called it in as stolen. The other mailboxes on that side of the street were flat, but the punk's car met it's match with that mailbox.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Nowadays the homeowner would be sued and lose his house.

[masraum]

A guy I work with had a problem with his neighbors from across the street (who were renting) repeatedly backing into his mailbox as they backed their SUV out of their driveway (my personal philosophy is that if you can't drive it, you shouldn't have it, but that's for another discussion). After something like 4 or 5 mailboxes being knocked down (and one drunken, retaliatory mailbox destrucktion, my coworker bought an "indestructable" mailbox or something like that and attached it with some sort of welded steel that included lengths of rebar or large bolts sticking out of the front of the mailbox. He said shortly after, he was in his front yard and noticed the neighbor's SUV had several holes punched right through the rear sheetmetal in the same pattern as his mailbox mount, but the mailbox was fine.

I think he's said that he didn't have any more issues with them backing into his mailbox after that.

[masraum]

Same guy, same nice high-ish end middle classed neighborhood. Some guy is speeding up and down the street on a 4 wheeler, hauling butt. One of the neighbors tells him to slow down on one of the passes (not sure how friendly it was). After a couple more passes, the guy grabs a 6' step ladder and tosses it into the street in front of the 4 wheeler on what I believe was his last high speed pass.

You know. In some ways, I envy the guys that are willing to fight fire with fire like that. But I just can't bring myself to take thing to that level. I guess fortunately, I've never felt pressed to do something due to that sort of action.

[gatotom]

usually on or before HS graduation, the mailbox derby would happen. I lost two or three mailboxes and then I got even.

Went to welder and he made a 4x4 1/4 inch steel tube frame, a L shape with angle brace posted into a 4 bag concrete hole. Mailbox is a 1/4 inch steel plate.

Next season, all mailboxes in our row were smashed expect mine, it had a dent but the broken bat laid on the ground. That was 20 yrs ago, its still standing among 20 other mailboxes.

Not only mailbox baseball can destroy mailboxes but winter snow destroys them also. County truck comes thru fast and with heavy wet snow, that mows mailboxes down also.

[Moses]

OK... This is BIZARRE. Either a coincidence or an adaptation of my life...

Mr Ingersoll was a terrible terrible man. Hateful and mean. The first time my friend Mike took out his mailbox he was in the back of my '47 Willys jeep. He used a baseball bat. Didn't decapitate the box but crushed it.

Ingersoll caused all sorts of trouble for us. In our 16 year old minds, the fact that he couldn't PROVE we did it almost meant we hadn't DONE it. He bought a new mailbox.

The jeep was a construction work vehicle. A few weeks later, a length of anchored chain was thrown from the jeep at low speed and it wrapped around the base of the redwood 4X4 mailbox post and plucked it like a carrot.

Ingersoll set a single length of railroad rail in concrete. He faced it with 1 x 1 redwood trim. It looked like a sturdier but tempting redwood post. But we knew about the railroad rail....

Late one night after inappropriate drinking and driving we were on our way home in Mike's '64 Rambler. He bought it for $50 as scrap but was able to get it running. Mike figured a head on shot with a rambler would take out the rail. He was partially right. On impact, the Rambler lurched into the air and landed, impaled on the rail. The post was at a 45 degree angle but it was holding the ass end of the Rambler up in the air. I remember the headlights shining on the asphalt about 2 feet from the lights. We were stuck... We scrambled out of the windows and ran home. Mike immediately called and reported to the police that his Rambler had been stolen.

I'm not proud of it... but it's true.

[Gogar]

I love the stories,

But I agree that our modern nanny society would have this in court when some poor innocent kid hurts his poor innocent arm or his innocent car.

[Crowbob]

If ever I'm summoned to a lie detector test, all's I have to do is think about my highschool hyjinks.

That will shirley confound the data!