In the spring of 2020, when I began the daily ritual of Pandemic Porch Cocktails, I noticed something odd in a tree across the street from my house. A branch had apparently broken off but had not fallen to the ground. Instead, it was stuck in the upper reaches of the tree and was sort of hanging there, swaying back and forth. It looked like it could fall to the ground (or on the roof of a parked car) at any moment, but instead it just dangled there, like the sword of Damocles. I shot this video clip of it:
I mentioned this on the Uni Watch blog. It was really just a throwaway observation, but readers were intrigued by it and requested updates on the branch. (This was during the early days of the pandemic, when people were desperate for any sort of connection.) So for the next month or so, I provided a daily update, which was always the same: “The branch is still there.”
During this time, the branch sort of became a supporting character at Uni Watch. People commented on it, asked about it, speculated about it. At some point, reader Andrew Hoenig dubbed the branch Branch Rickety — a nod to former Brooklyn Dodgers GM Branch Rickey.
On June 30th, 2020, we had a big storm and Branch Rickety finally came down, breaking into several pieces.
The next day, I reported that the branch had finally fallen. Within hours, reader Ron Ruelle had contacted me with an idea for a fictitious baseball team called the Brooklyn Branches, complete with a uniform concept and a Nike-style brand description.
Obviously, this plan needed to be brought to fruition in real life. So I collected several pieces of the branch and shipped them to the great DIYer Wafflebored, who created a jersey based on Ron’s concept (with a few modifications due to logistics and limited fabric resources). He even used pieces of the actual branch to create the wooden buttons that Ron had envisioned (you can click on the following thumbnails to see larger versions):
I ended up auctioning off the jersey on Uni Watch, with the proceeds going to the Arbor Day Foundation.
Wafflebored used some of the remaining wood from the branch to create a bunch of lapel pins. I still have mine!
We also did a series of Brooklyn Branches T-shirts, because why not? Just like a real team, the Branches had home whites, road greys, and two alternates: (click on thumbnails to see larger versions):
Unfortunately, we never created a real-life version of Ron’s cap concept.
It’s crazy how a random branch swaying from a tree across the street from my house ended up resulting in all of this, but that’s all part of what makes Uni Watch so special.