Forget the Phillies. The best Philly baseball story is in the ’burbs.

Upper Dublin High School held its commencement festivities Monday night, but hours before, there was another ceremony at the school that held as much meaning, if not more, for some of the graduates. After a team meeting ahead of their PIAA Class 5A semifinal matchup that morning against Elizabethtown, Upper Dublin’s varsity baseball players had to board the bus that would shepherd them to Muhlenberg High School in Reading, 48 miles west, for the game. As the players and coaches walked through the school to the bus, classrooms emptied, and students and teachers lined the hallways, holding handmade signs and cheering.

First pitch was at 11 a.m. It took the Cardinals eight innings to beat Elizabethtown, 1-0, to improve their record to 19-7 and put themselves one victory from the school’s first state championship in baseball.

“I saw a bunch of kids crying as we were leaving,” senior Ben Wilkins, Upper Dublin’s starting third baseman, said in a phone interview Tuesday. “This is really bringing us together as a community.”

A few hours later Monday, North Penn beat Neshaminy, 1-0, at Villanova Stadium in the Class 6A semis, and Faith Christian Academy, of Quakertown, shut out Mount Union, 2-0, in Hershey to reach the Class 2A championship game. That’s three District 1 teams, three suburban Philadelphia teams, heading to State College for the PIAA championships on Thursday and Friday, each with a shot at winning a state title.

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So while the Phillies were losing nine of 10 games, while they were getting swept in Pittsburgh by a terrible Pirates team, while they were finally scratching out a win Monday night — despite themselves — over the Cubs at Citizens Bank Park, the best baseball story in the Philadelphia region has been playing out for weeks. And how many people noticed?

Of course, why would anyone notice Faith Christian? The school has fewer than 1,000 students from kindergarten through 12th grade. The baseball team won its first state championship last year, in Class 1A, then moved up to 2A, and has gone 21-2 this season. “New teams, bigger schools,” coach Nick Koffel said. Same results. The key, he said, is treating every game, even one with a championship riding on it, “like it’s a regular game. It’s not life or death. It’s just a game.”

North Penn is the opposite of Faith Christian. North Penn is a giant, one of the largest public high schools in Pennsylvania, and it has won state titles as recently as 2009, 2013, and 2015. Yet in a testament to the quality of Southeastern Pennsylvania high school baseball, the Knights won the District 1 championship this year for the first time since 2008.

“There have been times it’s been harder to win the District 1 tournament than it was to win the state tournament because we had to get through such a grind,” coach Kevin Manero said. “We’re proud of playing in the Suburban One League. The pitchers we see day in and day out are next-level. The competition is so good that the teams are battle-tested.”

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A run like the one his team is on, Manero said, draws back alumni, community members, and familiar faces. It regenerates and strengthens the kinds of social connections that are fraying everywhere. Manero is a 1997 North Penn grad, and Dottie Reed, his third-grade math teacher at General Nash Elementary — who is now 88 years old and about to celebrate her 66th wedding anniversary — attends all the games with her husband. Don Ryan, North Penn’s longtime athletic director, died in January, and the team displays a jersey with his name on it during each of its games, so his widow, Nancy, can see it.

“I know it’s only baseball, and there are a million people around the world who don’t know what’s going on, but for our community, it’s pretty special,” said Manero, who also is finishing his 23rd year as an English and journalism teacher at his alma mater. “You feel like every day is different. The kids, their slate of life is clean, and you’re hoping you can do something to motivate them and inspire them. There’s a palpable energy to it. Kids get a bad rap today, that they’re always buried in their phones. It’s not real. They bring a lot to the table, and you have to unlock it. With coaching, you see things outside the classroom, guys doing things they love, and they’re hopefully developing these skills they’re learning for life. You want that to carry over to whatever they do and wherever they end up.”

Upper Dublin’s guys, meanwhile, have a chance to do something unprecedented. “We want one more,” Wilkins said. “This is not just for the baseball team. This is for the entire school, to be a state champion.” When the team bus pulled back into the school’s parking lot Monday afternoon, the players might as well have been conquering heroes to the friends and family members who had been streaming the game on their smartphones. And then the seniors had to get cleaned up and dressed for graduation.

“When you’re playing for your community, it just means more,” Upper Dublin coach Ed Wall said. “The fact that you have everybody rooting you on from your town is just amazing. It’s really hard to grasp all of it while we’re in the middle of it now, but I’m sure we’ll feel the effects when it’s finished.”

Look, you can freak out about the Phils if you want. There’s always time for it. There’s always another Alec Bohm tantrum, another bullpen meltdown or baserunning blunder, another key player heading to the injured list. There’s always the big stuff, whether you’re talking about sports or politics or entertainment or any other aspect of our culture, and it’s never been easier to believe or perceive that the big stuff is all there is.

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We’re all trapped in the web of fixations that social media spins, and that web can make something happening somewhere far away feel like the only story that matters, and that it’s happening right here, around the corner from you, and that the whole world is focused on it and nothing else. Could be the protests and riots in Los Angeles and the response to them. Could be the question of how many people actually are watching the NBA Finals. Could be the latest news about the Eagles or the Phillies or the chaos of college athletics.

Yes, that big stuff matters. But it’s not the only stuff. Often, it’s not even the most important stuff. Take a look around your neighborhood sometime. You’ll find the stuff that is.