Kelyn Ikegami has always loved baseball.
He was born and raised in Japan, where the sport enjoys immense popularity. When he moved to the Seattle area in 2001, the nearby Mariners were in the midst of the winningest regular season in MLB history, with Japanese rookie Ichiro Suzuki taking the league by storm en route to MVP honors. All of it left a profound impact on Ikegami.
“Sometimes when there’s nothing to talk about in my family,“ Ikegami said, ”baseball is all we can talk about.”
During his time studying film at BYU, Ikegami learned about Utah’s most illustrious claim to baseball fame: The 1987 Salt Lake Trappers and their record-breaking 29-game win streak.
Much like Ichiro and the Mariners years before, the mystique of the Trappers had Ikegami hooked. But there was one thing he didn’t understand:
Why don’t more people know the story of the Trappers?
For the past six years, Ikegami has been working to change that. This effort has resulted in “The Streak,” a feature-length documentary recounting the Trappers’ magical summer of ′87 and how the highs and lows of their baseball careers have continued to affect the former team members today.
Produced by the award-winning production company The Plains, “The Streak” (1 hour 27 minutes, rated PG) marks Ikegami’s feature directorial debut and will begin its limited theatrical release at The Broadway Centre Cinemas in Salt Lake City on Aug. 22.
“It’s my love letter to baseball. I wanted to make a movie where people can understand why people like me love baseball,” Ikegami told the Deseret News. “Not only is it a way of life, but it’s a reflection of life. The lessons you learn from baseball are applicable to the human side of our experience.
“I was hoping to make something that’s not just a baseball movie, something that baseball fans would love, but also that appeals to non-baseball fans and that brings everybody together in a shared way.”
The film premiered at the Nashville Film Festival in 2024, where it earned the event’s coveted Audience Award. The Utah premiere was held on Aug. 9 at the Downtown Daybreak Megaplex, fittingly right next to the brand new Bees ballpark that was made possible, at least partially, by the seeds planted decades ago by the Trappers.
“When I heard the movie was going to be (made), it was surreal. I just couldn’t believe it,” former Trappers catcher/outfielder Ed Citronnelli said at the Utah premiere. “It brought back a part of your life that you thought was gone and forgotten.
“When you went through that part of your life, you didn’t realize the importance or the significance of it until something like this came out. It’s as if you’re watching yourself from the outside, watching the movie of yourself and getting the opportunity to really take in what you couldn’t take in then.”
“I couldn’t dream this up, you know?” added former Trappers catcher and team captain Frank “Shady” Colston. “Who would have thought 38 years later that somebody’s going to call and tell you they’d like to make a movie about you and your ball club? ... To quote Eddie (Citronnelli), ‘The good Lord aligned it all.’”
The beginnings
Following the 1984 season, the owners of the Triple-A Salt Lake Gulls elected to move the team to Calgary, believing Salt Lake City was an undesirable baseball market. Entrepreneur Van Schley disagreed with the premise of the Gulls’ decision and assembled a sizable group of investors — including famed actor/comedian Bill Murray and current Los Angeles Angeles owner Arte Moreno — to secure the rights for a new Salt Lake franchise, which became the Trappers.
The Trappers competed in the rookie league — the lowest level of minor league baseball — as an independent franchise, meaning they had no parent MLB organization, would field a roster of players who went undrafted and were only paid $500 a month, all while still playing against the prospect-filled farm teams for big-league clubs.
Despite these seemingly disadvantageous circumstances, the Trappers flourished, with their ragtag roster of overlooked misfits winning the league championship in each of their first three seasons of competition (1985-87) and adding a fourth title in 1991.
But nothing compared to 1987.
From June 25 to July 26, nobody could beat the Trappers’ band of nobodies.
The streak
The team’s winning ways captured the attention of the sports world at large, with scores of media members from the likes of Sports Illustrated, ESPN, CNN and other prominent outlets flocking to sold-out Derks Field to see if the Trappers could shatter the professional baseball record of 27 consecutive wins that had stood for decades.
On July 25, a 13-3 Trappers victory behind six RBI from Colston gave them their record-breaking 28th win, igniting a raucous on-field celebration that escalated into a champagne hurricane in the clubhouse.
The Trappers would earn their 29th-straight victory the following day before finally taking a loss for the first time in more than a month, only to pop more champagne a few weeks later upon winning their third-straight league championship.
“You have a whole bunch of unwanted, undrafted nobodies coming together for one summer. You have to imagine, everything every day had to fall in place for 29 games in a row,” Citronnelli said. “... For one summer, nobody could understand how this could be possible with such a group.
“The backdrop of this story is unique because this is like the underdog, the one that had no hope of winning anything, coming out on top against all odds. It’s something that I don’t believe is going to be able to be duplicated in that fashion.”
Fun off the field
Amid the winning, there were plenty of off-the-field shenanigans for the Trappers, with stories of squeezing 10 guys into a one-bedroom apartment, hanging out with funnyman Murray and rock star Huey Lewis, slamming free beers at Duffy’s Tavern, long bus rides and dugout fistfights all peppering hearty laughs throughout “The Streak.”
Such memories flooded back in full force for the former Trappers — a dozen in total — who returned to Utah for the film’s premiere, some of whom hadn’t been back in the Beehive State or even seen other teammates since that magical ′87 season.
“(Salt Lake City) is such an amazing town, with amazing fans and amazing friends,“ Trappers third baseman Jon Leake told the Deseret News. ”It’s everything. It’s as good as it’s going to get for somebody who doesn’t make the big leagues."
In the documentary’s unique two-act structure, the streak itself, with all of its nostalgia and adrenaline, only covers about half of “The Streak.”
The film’s second act tackles the complicated, bittersweet truth that has bled into the streak’s legacy all these years later — the highest high of these players’ careers happened to come at the lowest level of professional ball.
An ‘existential crisis’
None of the ′87 Trappers ever reached the major leagues. A few of them have passed away. In the days since hanging up their spikes, the living former players have encountered such trials as alcoholism, the enduring effects of complicated father-son dynamics, the haunting agony of never achieving a lifelong dream and more.
“The streak really was this pivotal moment in their lives that kind of led to the rest of their lives,” Ikegami said. “Once I got talking with the players, they all told me about how difficult it was to stop playing baseball. The amount of dedication and time that athletes put into their sport is immense, it really is their identity.
“Sometimes you get to go out on your own terms, but more often than not, you don’t. You have this existential crisis of like, ‘Who am I without this sport?’
“I think that’s where a lot of the themes come from, because the players start exploring, ‘Well, without baseball, who am I?’ And yet, it’s this contradiction that baseball has still shaped the person that they are.”
But “The Streak” is far from a tragedy. While it has its somber moments, it’s largely hopeful, heartfelt and sometimes hilarious. It examines the complexity of the human condition within athletics, along with the redemptive power of accepting a life that appears different from what was once dreamed of or expected.
While none of the Trappers ever achieved their ultimate MLB dreams, their pursuit still resulted in precious memories, a lifelong brotherhood, and even a place in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, where Colston’s bat, a ball signed by the entire team, and a few other items currently reside to commemorate the Trappers’ place in baseball history.
That’s right — none of the Trappers ever played big league ball, yet they’re in the Hall of Fame. Not bad for a scrappy pack of rascals who just wanted to play baseball and prove to the world that they belonged.
“The Streak” is a wonderful, well-executed tribute to the Trappers, offering the world another chance to learn about and be inspired by that amazing summer of ′87 and what came next.
“It’s such a strong story of hope and perseverance, I believe anyone could benefit from it,” Colston said. “It’s a whole lot more than a baseball story.”
“It’s a story of underdogs, and everyone’s an underdog,” Leake added. “Anyone can perform when they’re at the top. What we did is put together a bunch of kids that were under the gun. We were the ultimate underdogs, we got paid barely any salary, we had to scrounge for everything that we could get.
“I think a lot of people, especially now with all the stuff that’s going on in the world ... I think there’s a lot of underdogs that can look at this and say, ‘These guys did it. They’re an inspiration, they got it done.’”
And as for the iconic winning streak itself, the former Trappers aren’t afraid of seeing another team surpass their record someday. In fact, they’re hoping it does end up happening.
“If someone had an opportunity to experience half of what we did, I would have to root for them,” Leake said. “Personally, I hope (the record) does get broken in my lifetime, so my wife and I can have one more date night like tonight to go out to see and celebrate it.”
