Paddle

[This is the first in a series of stories getting to know a variety of local athletes and coaches away from the game.] This is how seriousJ.J. Hardyis about the game: the first thing you see when you walk into his Chandler, Ariz., home is a gleaming pingpong table. "It's a room most people would use as a sitting room," the Orioles shortstop says. "Put some nice furniture in there. Maybe a piano or something like that. " Not Hardy. Hardy wanted to make a statement. So he filled the room with a sleek, $2,500 Killerspin pingpong table, blue with silver trim.

Members of the Canton Kayak Club can find a variety of colorful kayaks, paddles and life vests, and paddle around the harbor - as long as the sun is shining. Members can pick up a kayak at one of the club's four locations (Tide Point, Inner Harbor East Marina, Nick's Fish House and Bond Street Wharf in Fells Point) and paddle to one of the group's other sites. Some members commute to work via kayak. The club also holds weekly training courses and sponsors monthly events for beginners and kayaking experts.

Well before dawn, we push away from shore and -- just as travelers on North American rivers have done for centuries -- slip paddles into the water and turn our canoes downstream.Flickering silver from a quarter-moon ripples the river surface, a sheen of light to show the occasional V-wave behind rocks. In the velvet darkness we are attuned to small sounds -- paddle clunks, current riding over rocks. Gradually, gray light filters through a heavy mist, the stars dim and sunrise begins.Canoes link us to the history of this continent as no other craft can. American Indians made canoes everywhere there was water to navigate, from 60-foot cedar dugouts in the Northwest to the elegant birchbark canoes of Maine's North Woods.

Our paddle boat was in the middle of Trap Pond when the great blue heron flew past. He nearly skimmed the surface as his enormous wings swept through the air in great, long strokes.We paddled through the closely spaced clusters of baldcypress trees, which grow right out of the water in this out-of-the-way Delaware state park. Some Frisbee-sized turtles were sunning themselves on a half-submerged fallen tree. Startled, they slid into the water with barely a splash.It's an easy drive to Trap Pond State Park from the Delaware beaches.

The director of the Odenton Christian School was arrested yesterday on charges of beating a 3-year-old boy with a paddle, Anne Arundel County police said.Thurston Eugene Pike, 61, was taken into custody at the school in the 4800 block of Piney Orchard Parkway after police went there with a warrant for his arrest and a search and seizure warrant.Mr. Pike, who was charged with physical child abuse and assault and battery, was released on $500 bail yesterday afternoon, police said. Police also recovered a 14-inch paddle allegedly used in the June 3 incident, said Sgt. Robert A. Johnson, a county police spokesman.

It's being billed as The Paddle Battle on the Savage River in Western Maryland.There will be clowns, mimes, bands and concessions. The more adventurous can even paddle a canoe or take a white-water raft ride down a river. But the main event, May 16-17, will be the 1992 U.S. Olympic team trials for white-water slalom racing.State officials presented their final plans for the Olympic trials yesterday. Tickets for each session will be $10, free for children under 12 accompanied by an adult. Tickets for the trials, which will be held near Bloomington, are available at all area TicketMaster outlets.

Although their skinny legs barely reached the foot pedals, and the paddles stretched taller than the paddlers themselves, nothing could stop five young kayakers as they took to the water recently, navigating around blooming lily pad patches and concentrating on the perfect stroke. "I'm going to drop my oar," one small voice shouted. "It's a paddle. Not an oar," said patient Piney Run kayak instructor Jess Hall, for the third time. "Not. An. Oar." "And don't worry," she said. "Paddles float."

This season my canoe was late into the water, proving again for me that when deprived of a pleasure I appreciate it more.The canoe is a remarkable craft. As transportation or as exercise, it is fully democratic. It can be paddled, poled, sculled, rowed and sailed, but one can't, like Hiawatha, guide it by thought alone.The expert canoeist Albert Van Siclen Pulling defined it as ''the most interesting link that unites the past and future of the outdoors. It may be the only still popular but truly aboriginal tool that we have inherited.

I know a guy -- he's very close to me, so I'm going to skip his name to spare him the humiliation -- who bought an aluminum canoe. He never before had a canoe (or a canoeing lesson), but assumed he knew how to handle it on just about any kind of water, starting with a lake.What's the big deal anyway? Canoeing a lake is easy. You get in the canoe, you sit down, point the thing in a certain direction and paddle. My friend believed the way to keep the canoe on course was to alternate the paddle from his right side to his left side, compensating for the drift as he went.

IT'S MIDNIGHT, mid-January, cold and clear and calm. The river's a clean slate, mine alone to essay upon.The kayak comes alive as it slips from a little beach in the shadow of trucks whizzing over the U.S. 50 bridge in downtown Salisbury.Soon the city's sodium vapor lights and industrial waterfront give way to starlight, and the homes of the Wicomico's wealthy, unaware they are being watched tonight.I couldn't sleep. This is better than Letterman. I'm heading downriver. Tide's starting to flood up from the bay. When I turn back in an hour or so, it will boost me home.