The Can't-Miss Kids

The most important day of your life and you’re only twelve years old. The boys were like pre-teen rock stars. The best all-star baseball team Ridgewood had in more than twenty years. The whole town followed them in the media as they sliced through the competition like a hot-knife through butter.
They signed autographs, did interviews, and after each victory they went to Renatos and stuffed their faces with some post-game pizza; the cheers were so loud the night they won the New Jersey State title, that you’d have thought thirteen little Bruce Springsteens just walked through the door.
The can’t miss-kids were one win from the Promised Land, one out from the World Series, when they’d have to deal with some major league pressure; and maybe if the adults had behaved, things wouldn’t have gotten so ugly.