Finding Neverland in the Summer of 1987

The summer of 1987 is out there somewhere.

It's trapped in decaying television footage with sun-faded colors and shoulder-padded news anchors. It's hiding in the glow of neon beer signs at Duffy's Tavern and in the dust that once drifted across Derks Field after another impossibly hot day in Salt Lake City. It's preserved in newspaper clips, ticket stubs and the memories of men who were young enough to believe baseball might save them.

Back then, Salt Lake was smaller. Slower. This was before we became an Olympic city, before downtown towers reshaped the skyline, before Daybreak, TRAX and the tech boom; this was a summer when the hottest ticket in town was a rookie-league baseball game at an aging ballpark west of downtown.

That summer, a team of overlooked ballplayers — none of whom would ever play a game in the Big Show — did something no one else in the history of professional baseball had done. They won 29 games in a row. And it hasn't happened since.

For a few weeks, they were chasing a record and the whole world was watching. The rest of their lives, whether they knew it or not, they were chasing what came after.

The part that doesn't fit in a paragraph

The baseball part of the story has been preserved in box scores, newspaper archives and Hall of Fame exhibits. Anyone can look up the number: 29 consecutive victories, the longest winning streak in professional baseball history. The facts fit neatly into a paragraph. What happened afterward doesn't.

A pitcher returns home and builds a life. A catcher finds a different career. Players scatter across the country. Some stay connected. Others drift apart. The dream that brought them together slowly expires, one roster move and one missed opportunity at a time.

Which is what drew filmmaker Kelyn Ikegami to the story in the first place. Kelyn grew up in Japan and moved to Salt Lake when he was 10, arriving with his countrymen's almost religious reverence for baseball. He was studying film at BYU in 2012 when he encountered the story of the 1987 Trappers.

"It all happened with the 25th anniversary in 2012," Kelyn says. "It wasn't me who encountered the story first — it was my producer, Hunter Phillips. We were both in film school and both big baseball fans. He heard that the Salt Lake Bees were hosting the Trappers because they had broken this amazing record, and Bill Murray, a part-owner of the Trappers, showed up to the anniversary."

In 2018, he and Phillips started working in earnest on The Streak, a 2025 documentary highlighting not only that summer but, more importantly, what happened to the players' lives after.

"Their accomplishment was recognized by the Hall of Fame, which is something most professional baseball players never experience," he says. "At the same time, none of them reached the major leagues, which was their ultimate goal."

A 29-game winning streak is almost impossible. They were a really good team, but they also needed a lot of things to go their way. There were miracle plays, bizarre breaks, rain delays and moments that felt almost impossible.

The 1916 New York Giants (26) couldn't do it. The 2017 Cleveland Guardians got close (22). So how did a bunch of guys who weren't even drafted, on an independent rookie league team, pull it off?

A large small town

Salt Lake City in 1987 still felt like a large small town. The population hovered around 160,000. Fans knew players by name. Ballplayers ate at the same restaurants every day. Frank Colston, one of the central figures in the film, remembers living just blocks from Derks Field and eating regularly at the old Coachman's restaurant near the stadium. They celebrated their wins and licked their wounds at Duffy's Tavern on Main Street, where Bill Murray was known to hop behind the bar and start pouring beers.

"The baseball community of Salt Lake City was one big Trapper family," Frank says.

For players who had spent years fighting for opportunities, the city offered something they hadn't always found elsewhere: belonging.

"What they came to realize," Kelyn says, "was that everybody was going through the same thing. They all had chips on their shoulders. They'd all been overlooked. They all had something to prove."

That shared disappointment became a glue. The streak ended long ago. The friendships didn't.

"More than 35 years later, they're still friends," he says. "I was on their group text for a while, and they were texting every single day."

The resurrection of a dead story

For Frank, the record had become something else entirely. By the time Kelyn tracked him down, he had spent decades putting the story behind him. "For me, that time had already come," Frank says. "I had detached from this story completely."

Baseball had once consumed his life. Then life moved on. "Emotionally, I probably lived on this story for 20 years," he says. "Eventually, we all let it go."

Then the filmmakers called. He ignored them. They called again. And again.

"The guys tried to contact me for several months and I didn't respond," Frank says. "Then one day I picked up the phone. Once I talked to Kelyn, Jared and Hunter, and understood that their motives were pure, I told them, 'Come on over.'"

"It was like the resurrection of a dead story," Frank says. "And I mean that in the most positive way. It's been beautiful."

That resurrection culminated last year when many of the former Trappers returned to Utah for a reunion surrounding the film's release. They gathered once again in the city where they had become baseball legends. Older now. Grayer. Wiser. Still carrying pieces of that summer.

The movie isn't ultimately about winning 29 games. It's about what happens when the best summer of your life ends. It's about the distance between achievement and fulfillment. About the dreams we accomplish and the ones we don't. About the friendships that outlast both.

And in the back corner of Duffy's Tavern, you'll find a shrine to that summer filled with ticket stubs, jerseys and other memorabilia. Take a moment and hoist a glass to the boys of the summer of 1987.

---

'What an incredible Cinderella story'

When the Salt Lake Trappers launched in 1985, Bill Murray purchased a small ownership stake as part of an investment group that included future Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno. His older brother, actor Brian Doyle-Murray, also became closely associated with the club, giving the Trappers an unmistakably Hollywood flavor despite operating at the lowest rung of professional baseball.

The Murray brothers weren't absentee celebrity investors. Both spent time around Derks Field, mingling with players, working promotions and helping cultivate the team's freewheeling personality. During the streak, Murray invited Huey Lewis to sing the national anthem, adding to the Trapper Fever that had spread far beyond the ballpark.

"We had 25 rejects and we won 29 in a row, including the championship," Murray said at the team's 25th reunion in 2012. "It's in the Baseball Hall of Fame. It's a one-time event."