My friend John is my everyday-life hero of this summer, but the real star in his tale is Little League Baseball, as a stand-in for all those local, community-based endeavors that are prototypical exemplars of American life.

And, to give away the ending, yes, consider this a paean to Edmund Burke’s idea (amplified by Alexis de Tocqueville) of the importance of the “little platoons” of private and nonpolitical civic life.