The rules of hitting are simple: Keep your eye on the ball. Pick your pitch. Commit. Follow through.

At their essence, the rules of fielding are just as simple: Know where you are. Anticipate the flight of the ball. Keep the ball in front of you. Catch and cover.

There are, of course, innumerable ways to complicate the game of baseball. But for the Manoa Padres' Shetland Division tee-ball team, the maddening intricacies and nuances of the game can wait.

What matters to coach Sarie Uechi and her young charges are fun and fundamentals, maybe even a chance to learn about life through the lens of the sport.

In his first year with the Padres, 5-year-old Joshua Miyazawa learned the game one simple rule at a time. His lesson in real life, in contrast, has come in a dizzying rush.

It was a mere six months ago that Joshua laced up his cleats for his first Padres practice.

Just six weeks ago, he lay on an operating table with his chest splayed open so doctors could repair a hole in his heart.

And in just one week, Joshua will leave Hawai'i to join tee-ball players from around the country in a just-for-fun game on the South Lawn of the White House.

On this humid late afternoon on the Kaimuki High School softball field, however, Joshua is in a timeless place, seemingly everywhere at once.

There he is, adjusting his stance behind the plate in anticipation of a slow, underhand pitch. There he is, dropping his glove and running to the fence for a glimpse of a passing firetruck. There he is again, rolling on the ground with his 2-year-old sister Joy in a tangle of elbows and knees and giggles.

Seated on the grass behind the backstop, ever watchful, Joshua's parents, Jeff and Joanie Miyazawa, take a moment to consider the roiling stream of circumstances upon which their family has risen, fallen and risen again these past few months.

"We're humbled," Joanie says. "God has really blessed us."

SPORTS ARE IN HIS GENES

The rules of life are simple: Do what you need to do. Stay strong in what you believe in. Serve. Trust.

There was little doubt that Joshua would be exposed to sports at a young age.

His mother, Joanie, was a standout volleyball and basketball player at Hawai'i Baptist Academy. His father, Jeff, played baseball and football for 'Iolani School and has spent the past dozen years coaching his alma mater's baseball team. Older brother Jonah, 7, played for the Padres for two years before moving on. Joy will, too, as soon as she's old enough.

"I think you learn a lot about life through sports," Jeff says. "Not just the skills of the game, but being mentally tough and battling through hardships."

But sports rank far below faith and service in the Miyazawa family.

Jeff, a dentist, makes regular visits to Brazil and the Dominican Republic, providing free services to impoverished communities as part of a missionary program sponsored by Faith Christian Fellowship.

Joanie, a hairstylist, offers free haircuts to laid-off Aloha Airlines employees through Wellspring Covenant Church.

The Miyazawas built a family, a life, based on their belief in faith in action. And when crisis came, as it does for all families, they met it with a sense of peace and acceptance that surprised even themselves.

It was during a routine physical late last year that doctors discovered a small hole in the thin wall that separates the upper chambers of Joshua's heart.

The condition, called an atrial septal defect, has few if any symptoms in children. However, if left untreated, the defect can eventually result in abnormal heart rhythm, pulmonary hypertension, stroke and overall poor heart function.

"Basically," Jeff explains, "(Joshua) wouldn't live as long if it wasn't fixed."

The standard treatment for ASD is open-heart surgery. To repair Joshua's heart, a surgeon would need to cut open the child's chest, separate his breastbone, connect him to a heart-lung bypass machine, then suture a patch over the hole in the atrial septal wall.

"When you think about it, it's a big deal," Jeff says. "It's routine, but it's still open-heart surgery."

The strange thing was, he says, "I don't know if we were really that shocked."

In fact, Joanie says, people were amazed at how calm the Miyazawas seemed throughout the whole ordeal.

"It was one of those things where you know you've got to do it, so you do it," Jeff says. "Maybe that's our outlook on life."

The surgery was important but not necessarily urgent, and so the Miyazawas elected to let Joshua play out the Padres season before going under the knife.

Joshua would undergo the surgery on May 19 — a day after the Padres' season-ending picnic — at Kapi'olani Medical Center. When he awoke hours later in the pediatric intensive care unit, his first words were: "Did they fix my heart yet?"

A day later, he was moved to a regular hospital room. A day after that, he was back at home. By the end of the week, Jeff says, "he was ready to put on his shoes and ride his scooter."

Today, the only thing that distinguishes Joshua from his active, energetic, endearingly spacy teammates is the tidy, 5-inch —"Five feet!" Joshua proclaims — scar that runs down the center of his chest.

That, too, will fade eventually.

"Our faith in God was the key," Joanie says. "We knew everything would be OK."

BEGAN WITH A LETTER

The rule of karma is simple:

"Good things happen to good people," says Uechi, Joshua's tee-ball coach. "(The Miyazawas) give a lot to the community, and they deserve this."

In this case, the good thing that happened to Joshua and his family started with a letter from Uechi.

Earlier in the year, the White House had put out a call for applications for its first "Tee Ball on the South Lawn All-Star Game."

But the call was apparently lost somewhere over the Pacific. By the time the official deadline passed in April, hundreds of applications had been received from 49 states plus the District of Columbia — but not a one from Hawai'i.

When the deadline was extended, Hawai'i Rep. Neil Abercrombie stepped forward to help publicize the search. Once Uechi caught wind of the opportunity, she contacted Abercrombie's office for more information then informed the parents of each of her players.

Uechi, an engineer by day, had coached the Miyazawas' oldest child Jonah for two years and was well familiar with the outgoing, ever-in-motion Joshua by the time he joined the squad in January.

"The application said (selection) was not based on baseball ability, just on why the player deserves to be chosen," Uechi says. "I thought Josh would be perfect."

Uechi spent the next week drafting letters of recommendation for Josh and three of his teammates.

"Although words such as energetic, athletic, smiley and talkative accurately describe Joshua," Uechi wrote in her letter, "perhaps the most compelling description would be 'A FIGHTER.' "

The recommendation was enough to convince judges from Little League International, who promptly selected Joshua to represent his home state in the all-star game.

"It was all thanks to Sarie's efforts," Joanie says. "We had four kids from the team apply and she wrote a 300-word essay for each of them. I don't know another coach who would be willing to do that for her team."

The Miyazawas' itinerary calls for a tour of the Capitol organized by Abercrombie's office and a meeting with local baseball player Shane Victorino of the Philadelphia Phillies.

Joshua's preparations for the game, which will be held on July 16, include a crash course in civics and government — "so at least he knows what's going on when they go on their tour," Joanie says.

MORE THAN JUST CHANCE

In August, Joshua will expand his athletic repertoire with a foray into tackle football. By next spring, he'll be back with the Padres, likely moving from the overcrowded outfield to one of the infield positions traditionally occupied by the "big kids" of the squad.

"I know he will be exposed to baseball a lot because of his family, but no matter what happens to him, whether he chooses to pursue it or whether he just becomes a fan of it, later on he'll know what a big deal all of this is," Uechi says.

To Joanie, the events of the past few months were strung together by more than mere chance.

Joshua was originally scheduled to undergo his surgery in the first week of June. Instead, Joshua's surgeon moved the date up by two weeks.

"If not for that, I don't think we'd be going (to Washington)," Joanie says. "If it was in June, I think we would have thought, 'No, he's not ready for traveling.' "

The timing was too perfect to be just coincidental, Joanie says.

It was, she believes, simply divine.