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Reader question: Please explain “rides the pine” in this sentence: Determined to prove himself, Harold tries out for the football team, but he serves as water boy and rides the pine until he finally gets a chance to redeem himself at the big game. My comments: Riding the pine is a sports term for someone sitting on the bench instead of playing. Sitting on the bench? Yeah, teams are always made up of more players than you see at any given time actually playing. Take the game of basketball for example. The game is played 5-on-5, i.e. each side fielding five players. However, each team is allowed to carry as many as 12 or 15 players. Does that make sense? It does, what with injuries and developing young players and coaches wanting to play various lineups against different opponents, etc. So during a game, players currently not playing on a football field or basketball court, as the case may be, are seen sitting on the bench near the sideline, watching and cheering their teammates on. While sitting on the bench, they’re sometimes called bench warmers because their body heat warms the cold bench beneath, especially if they sit on the bench a lot – due to injury or because they’re not good enough to play at all. Anyways, the American expression riding the pine is just another way of saying somebody is sitting on or warming the bench. The expression came to be because apparently in the old days most benches were made of hardwood carved out of pine trees. | 
