Rams’ Gary Takes a Giant Step Back : Pro football: After eight games of trying to live down a reputation of fumbling, he has a relapse.

Cleveland Gary let his fingers do the talking Sunday afternoon.

If this was bad news to the reporters that assembled around Gary’s locker stall, only to find no clothes, no towels, no equipment bag and no Gary--hence, no comment--consider what it meant to Chuck Knox.

Knox, coach of a still-wobbly Ram football team, has entrusted his ground offense this year to a recovering fumblaholic. Not by design, mind you; call it a case of mutual desperation.

Gary had fumbled 12 times in 1990 and had fumbled away his job in 1991, but together, he and Knox were determined to make it back, all the way back, because they needed each other. Gary needed the paycheck and Knox needed at least one play that involved both a handoff and forward progress.

Before Sunday, they were halfway through a 16-step rehabilitation program with nothing to show but encouraging results. Five touchdowns, 663 yards, only two setbacks--one of them a fumble that the Rams recovered, the other a fumble that the New York Giants recovered, early in the second quarter of an eventual 21-point victory by the Rams.

So, in essence: Eight games down, no harm done.

One day at a time.

One step at a time.

Knox, however, knew there could be days like Sunday. No amount of positive reinforcement and daily affirmation could obscure the reality that Gary was riding atop a rickety wagon and was capable falling off, anywhere and at any moment.

Knox only hoped it wouldn’t hurt his team the way it was hurt against the Phoenix Cardinals.

Gary’s fall was a free one, complete with arms flailing, footballs sailing and 14 points gift-wrapped and bow-tied for the Cardinals. Gary fumbled three times in four quarters and lost the ball twice:

--Once at the Rams’ 45, setting up a seven-play Phoenix drive and a six-yard touchdown run by Johnny Johnson.

--Once at the Cardinals’ 21, setting up Phoenix linebacker Aeneas Williams for a 39-yard recovery-and-return, followed, six plays later, by a 10-yard touchdown run by Johnson.

Gary also scored a touchdown for the Rams, so, without his presence, the final score might have read: Rams 7, Cardinals 6.

But Gary did give and he did take away, and so Knox is stuck with this score: Cardinals 20, Rams 14.

Any wonder Gary didn’t choose to stick around afterward?

“That’s a natural response,” said Chick Harris, Ram running back coach and Gary’s personal tuck-it-in-and-hold-it-there therapist.

“I think any guy going through that situation, where he has victory in his hands and lets it slip away like that, is going to feel that way. He’s going to be disappointed, and the only thing he wants to do is get away.”

Gary has been a special project for Harris. One on one on the practice field at Rams Park, Harris and Gary have been the Chick Center for Ballhandling Abuse, rehearsing pitchouts and handoffs and what to do with the football from that point onward.

Still, Gary’s reputation precedes him, and follows him, around the league. Once a fumbler, always a fumbler, right?

“It’s talked about, yeah,” said Williams, who would have run Gary’s last fumble back for a 69-yard touchdown if teammate Eric Swann hadn’t been flagged for clipping Jackie Slater. “You know the guys who have fumbled a lot. . . . I heard guys talking about how (Gary) carries the ball in his left hand. Guys were saying, ‘Just go after the ball.’ ”

Harris was asked if he feared a relapse for Gary, after so many gains in previous weeks.

“No,” Harris replied, somewhat bravely. “We just go forward from here. If anyone in the stadium wanted to hold onto the football today, it was Cleveland Gary. He feels worse about it than anyone else. We’ll move on from here.”