For your boys Hank and Fish, turns out all that glitters is gold. In the past, we certainly claimed to be the only thing that mattered about The Dartmouth’s sports section (R.I.P. Dong Zhao ’13). Now, however, we are literally the entirety of The Dartmouth’s least prestigious page. You can’t escape us.
Even the outside world has started to take notice of the new voices filling the vacuous gap where the Rec League Legends used to be. Our fanbase is now twofold: a deranged commenter named “plansmaker” who has 140 comments on his Disqus account almost exclusively on Jeremy Lin articles and a perhaps more deranged Tuck School of Business professor, Richard McNulty, who emailed us singing a song of praise and of wisdom.
Old man McNulty made two critical mistakes in his brief, expertly worded e-mail. He gave us a million-Internet-dollaridea free of charge and became our life mentor without even knowing it.
We trail him around like he’s Gandalf the Grey, and we are hobbits seeking to destroy the One Ring to Rule Them All. Tuck’s wizard had stumbled upon a nugget of truth: the ideas well had run dry for Hank and Fish.
We had been locked in a prison of our own stupidity. McNulty handed us a rock hammer and told us to start digging just like Andy Dufresne. It was time to write a mailbag. We wanted nothing more than to honor our sensei’s wishes. Unfortunately, he was the only one to submit any mail for the mailbag. This week Riding the Pine shares the spotlight and answers all of McNulty’s questions.
Richard M., Hanover, N.H.: Nice pic of the two of you. But who is Henry and who is Joe?
RTP: First of all, thanks for the compliment, Richard. We think it’s a nice pic too. To clarify, Henry’s the one wearing the v-neck and the corduroy “Life is Good” hat. Joe is the one wearing the friendly sweater and the intimidating sunglasses.
Sort of a yin and yang approach to fashion that we try to adhere to whenever together in public. We’ll let the readers decide who wore it better.
Richard M., Hanover, N.H.: Have you heard of the Boston Red Sox? Maybe you can try a baseball story at some point this summer? After all, they are the boys of summer, and many use pine tar.
RTP: Ah, sports. The elephant in the room. While we have heard of the Boston Red Sox, we steadfastly refuse to sully our column with talk of midsummer baseball, especially not about the Boston Red Sox who sit forlornly in the cellar of the American League East.
The Red Sox finished last in the American League East in 2012 before bouncing back to win the World Series in 2013. Perhaps for Boston fans, this year should signal nothing but another championship around the corner.
Unlike Billy Beane, Big Papi’s “shtick” only works in the playoffs. We also vehemently object to your use of the “boys of summer” to describe any baseball team. The true “boys of summer” sit here, alone in lower level Berry, blogging on a public access computer as we cackle maniacally at our own bits.
Richard M., Hanover, N.H.: Can either of you palm a basketball? Or perhaps it’s symbolic of your relationship as coauthors?
RTP: No, we cannot palm a basketball or even come close, but we do appreciate your misguided faith in us. Joining together (as coauthors) at each of the “Dartmouth Seven” locations was done with no thought beyond our juvenile enjoyment of areas that imply sex.
The symbolism of our picture-taking was becoming perhaps too clear and even our slowest readers were beginning to catch on. We decided to take a break from the bit to let things cool down for a while. College President Phil Hanlon shouldn’t rest easy, though; we’re still going to tick his lawn off our list.
The craziest thing of all is that we’ve risen so high, so fast. We are the editors, we are the writers. This entire section is subject to our capricious whims. That kind of dominance would satisfy lesser minds. We still hunger for more. We’ve been blogging with our eyes wide shut since Pelt-a-Delta and we’re only opening them next week so we can beg Lindsay Ellis to let us write about Masters.
