It begins when 13-year-old Norton Ryder and his friends meet for their Saturday sandlot football game. It's 1985 in Duram, California. The lot they play on is claimed as private property by Mary Carver, the town slumlord. "Haggy Mary," as she is known, has devised a means for finally keeping the "little S---s" off her land. She's doused the dry grass with gasoline. When the flames roar across the field, it's only the beginning of the trouble to come, for her gardener, Percy Hawkins, is looking on in horror. As it turns out, it's dangerous to mentor a thirteen-year-old runaway teenager, especially when you're an NFL football star and murder is involved!