Knack

NEW YORK -- Steve Kerr shouldn't be here, in this town playing in this event, and even he knows it.Logic says Kerr, at age 33, should be selling real estate or by now, regaling his three children with stories of a great college career followed by a stop or two in the NBA. Or maybe playing overseas, where there's still a market for a slow, skinny guy who can do nothing but shoot.Anywhere but here.Anywhere but Madison Square Garden for last night's Game 3 of the NBA Finals, playing for the rampaging San Antonio Spurs and standing just two victories shy of his fourth consecutive championship ring.

There's no formula for it, no blueprint, no established method for building it or measuring it. You just know it when you see it: A winning way. A knack for coming out ahead.Teams with it are resourceful, clutch and play together, exceeding the sum of their parts. They invent ways to win, not ways to lose.Teams without it end up frustrated, as the Orioles were last night after a 9-8 loss to the Yankees that resembled many of their losses to the reigning World Series champs over the past two seasons.

This is how desperate the U.S. Justice Department is to win its epic fight against Microsoft: It hired as lead attorney an outsider who doesn't use a computer, dresses like a car salesman and humiliated the government the last time it tried a case like this.But 57-year-old superlawyer David Boies has a fearsome knack for winning.The stakes will be high in U.S. vs. Microsoft Corp., which begins today in federal court in Washington. The outcome will help determine how much success is too much for an American corporation and who will lead the computer revolution into the next century.

Rashad Smith calls himself a gambling man."That's just me. I've always been the kind to take risks," said Navy's senior safety, who was named the ECAC Defensive Player of the Week after his performance in the Midshipmen's 46-16 rout of SMU on Saturday.Judging by the results, Smith is either extremely lucky or good in taking advantage of defensive opportunities. The Atlanta native has come up with a fumble or interception in eight of the past 15 games.Smith provided the clincher against SMU by converting a fourth-quarter interception into a 25-yard touchdown return.

I love our life. Don't you just love our life?" Marci often asked her husband.Bob would practically gush: "Yeah, it's incredible!""Pinch me," she would say."Pinch me," he'd reply. And, like a test, they would.Pregnant just seven months after their marriage, Marci was ecstatic. She had worried for years about the cancers she had survived and about her mother's use of the hormone DES, which she feared might threaten her own ability to conceive a child. But these concerns receded as she and Bob charted their life together.

It is ridiculous to suggest that the Ravens have nothing left to play for in 1997 after losing again yesterday to fall out of the playoff picture.These are the Ravens we're talking about, friends, not the Packers or Broncos or Cowboys.They were never more than a "Where's Waldo" in the playoff picture, anyway, and they still have plenty to prove, regardless of their place in the standings.They still have to prove that they can occasionally win a game, for instance.Oh, that.Wouldn't that be a nice holiday gift to a city that shelled out $220 million to steal them?

For Mike Gill and Don McClure, life is like an Easter Egg hunt. And with a little luck, a multibillion-dollar merger or two, and a couple of favorable changes in the law, there soon may be $100 million worth of eggs passing through their basket every year.The two men run Lutherville-based Americom Inc., which has made itself into a $27 million a year business doing the jobs too small for many big cellular carriers -- like installing phones, servicing them, or running call centers that support customer service.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton has decided he can commune with voters in Iowa and Michigan some other time. A Rhode Island trip was "rescheduled." The president's town hall meeting planned for Tuesday in Akron? Nobody at the White House seems to remember anything about it.Instead of these trips, Mr. Clinton added a last-minute campaign stop in . . . Syria.Tuesday morning, two weeks before the Nov. 8 midterm elections, Mr. Clinton will leave for an impromptu five-day swing through the Middle East, a trip planned so hurriedly that the details -- including which nations he will visit -- were being nailed down as late as Friday afternoon.

Glenelg's Scott Cline has as many skills with which to beat an opponent as any basketball player in the county. And he's a key reason the Gladiators are enjoying one of their best seasons ever.Most noticeable is his acrobatic shooting ability.The Glenelg senior has a knack for sinking the impossible, off-balance, hand-in-your face shots that most coaches discourage their players from taking.His coach, Terry Coleman, doesn't mind. "Scott has a presence in the air," Coleman said.Cline averages 17.9 points, is 68-for-131 from two-point range ans 13-for-42 from beyond the three-point line.

Defense lawyers in the Gary Hart rape trial continued Friday trying to convince jurors that the alleged victim is an unreliable witness because of a mental disorder that a psychiatrist testified could causeher fantasize about being raped.With the trial of the prominent real estate broker entering its third week tomorrow, jurors heard from a parade of defense witnesses ranging from Hart's friends to a Fairfax County police officer who testified that the woman reported beingsexually assaulted nearly 10 years ago in Virginia.

The Ravens might have hit the rookie-free-agent jackpot again. The team has had success in the past with undrafted free agents like inside linebacker Bart Scott, center Mike Flynn and safety Will Demps. As the Ravens conclude offseason minicamps next week with a rookie minicamp, one player in particular has caught the eyes of the coaching staff. Meet Kevin Joseph Gerard, better known as K.J., a cornerback-safety out of Northern Arizona. Usually, rookie free agents don't meet NFL standards.

Last year, the Panthers ended the season No. 1 after claiming the prestigious Baltimore Catholic League championship behind the strong play of Metro Player of the Year Sean Mosley. The standout guard is now doing his thing at Maryland, but many in the area believe this season's team might be even better. The Panthers, now under the direction of alum Mark Karcher, begin the season where they left off last year - at No. 1. With a talented backcourt led by R.J. Williams, Dante Holmes and Wayne Sparrow; the arrival of one of the nation's finest forwards in Montrose Christian transfer Terrell Vinson; and plenty of team depth, the Panthers are in strong position to take the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference and another BCL title.

Player of the year Lauren Gibson Chesapeake-AA The junior standout was once again at her best when it counted the most, leading the No. 1 Cougars to their second consecutive Class 4A state championship with a second straight no-hit performance in the title game. In repeating as the All-Metro Player of the Year, Gibson, who has made an oral commitment to Tennessee, enjoyed another stellar season on the mound, at the plate and on the bases. She went 17-2 with a 1.23 ERA, striking out 165 batters in 120 innings.

Kelsey Erdman, a 5-foot-8 junior forward for River Hill, closed out a strong playoff week with a 13-point, 17-rebound effort to help lead the No. 8 Hawks (26-0) past Howard County-rival Mount Hebron, 54-39, for their second straight Class 3A East regional crown on Friday. In the three wins last week, she had 38 points, 27 rebounds and 16 steals. After earning a spot on the varsity team in her freshman year, Erdman became a starter going into the playoffs last season and has been a major contributor ever since.

There's no way around it - St. Mary's lacrosse standout Allison Perkins likes giving to others. She enjoys her summer camp job working with disabled children, thrives on keeping her teammates in stitches, and when Christmas rolls around, she likes doling out presents just as much as getting them. As for this time of year, the Saints junior center loves nothing more than dishing out assists. Lots of them. In her first season as a varsity starter, Perkins is the county's top feeder, piling up 84 assists to go with 16 goals as the No. 6 Saints took a 13-5 record into yesterday's regular-season finale against John Carroll.

It's always nice to be an overnight sensation, even if you're bald and old enough to have been inspired to become a fashion photographer after seeing Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up in the 1960s. Just ask Paul Haggis, the Canadian-born writer-director who's so hot right now that he has Steven Spielberg pitching him story ideas and Dustin Hoffman taking him to lunch. What makes the 52-year-old's success so satisfying is that he earned it the hard way. After years of toiling in relative obscurity in TV, where he was beloved by critics but spurned by audiences - the show he considers his greatest achievement, EZ Streets, was canceled the week it debuted - he has suddenly emerged as Hollywood's go-to guy for dark, difficult material.

Eddie Murphy's knack for portraying multiple characters pays off again in Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (8 p.m.-10 p.m., WBFF, Channel 45). In this 2000 sequel, Professor Sherman Klump wants to get rid of his suave alter ego, Buddy Love, but trying to exorcise him proves difficult and dangerous. At a glance Blue Collar TV (8 p.m.-8:30 p.m., WNUV, Channel 54) - Three comics from the Blue Collar Comedy Tour - Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall and Larry the Cable Guy - bring their act to TV for this new series that will include both stand-up and sketch comedy.

Betty Spielman, a Catonsville homemaker, died of an infection Thursday at St. Agnes HealthCare. She was 81. Born Betty Parker Taylor in Baltimore and raised on Catonsville's Forest Drive, she was a 1939 graduate of Catonsville High School and in later years helped organize her class reunions. She earned a bachelor's degree at what is now St. Mary's College of Maryland. In 1943, she married Gordon Spielman, an Air Force lieutenant who became a Westport general contractor. He died in 1992.

"Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War," by Deborah Copaken Kogan. Villard. 300 pages. $24.95. Deborah Copaken Kogan writes about her life as a photographer in the late '80s and early '90s in Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Romania and Russia. "Shutterbabe" is an honest, easy read with tales of love, innocence lost, violence, death, history, sex and sexism. Kogan doesn't have the knack for sustaining tension. But she will wrench your heart when she describes being in the thick of things. The "Shutterbabe" clicks in passages about a horrific Romanian orphanage, the chaotic end of Glasnost and the assaults, both verbal and physical, Kogan endures while trying to get the photo.

The truth in tableware "Definitive" barely begins to describe the new book "China and Glass in America 1880-1980: From Tabletop to TV Tray" (Harry Abrams, 2000, $49.50), based on an exhibition organized by the Dallas Museum of Art. Just as archaeologists use pottery shards to extrapolate the lifestyle and living conditions of cultures of the past, this book, by Charles L. Venable with Ellen P. Denker, Katherine C. Grier and Stephen G. Harrison, uses tableware to explore the manners and mores of a nation emerging into a major power.