That is alot of Wins

Until the early 1990s, it was not uncommon for their to be teams in minor league baseball that did not have a MLB parent club. In order to remain in the league the teams had to recruit and sign players themselves. Most of the time the teams would do very poorly on the field. This was because the players, who did not have contacts with major league organizations usually were not good enough to have one.

In 1987 there was an independent team that was a huge exception to this rule. The Salt Lake City Trappers of the Pioneer League were the best team in the league thanks to a 29 game winning streak in July. The previous record for most consecutive wins by a National Association team in a row was 27. On July 24, 1987, they tied this record thanks to a 7-2 win over the Pocatello Giants at Derks Field in Salt Lake City. Three days later they tasted defeat for the first in over a month, when at Cobb Field in Billings, Montana, they suffered a 7-5 loss at the hands of the Billings Mustangs. If you remove the 29 wins from their record, it would still be 20-21.

One of more interesting things about this club is that not one player on the team ever saw a day in the majors. Even manager Jim Gilligan could not get a job working in a major league organization as a minor league manager. Six of the other 7 clubs in the league combined to send 28 players to the major leagues. The 29 game winning streak would last as a record for only five years, when the the 1992 Blue Jays- east club of the Dominican Summer League had a 33 game winning streak enroute to a 68-2 record in 70 games.

Tomorrow we will look at several basebakk games and a basketball game.