Mike Klingaman

Mike Klingaman might be losing his mind. At 60, he cannot recall what he had for lunch, and he sometimes gets lost while driving to work. However, he can clearly remember the color of the special sauce on a "Gino Giant" burger (pink), as well as his whereabouts on May 9, 1961, when Orioles slugger Jim Gentile hit consecutive grand slams (listening to the game on a transistor radio while walking the dog). Both his collection of baseball cards and doo-wop records from the 1950s are largely intact.

A Baltimore native, Klingaman attended Catonsville High, where his short-lived baseball career ended during tryouts when a line drive skimmed off his glove and struck him in the head. He earned his school letter cleaning up sweats as manager of the junior varsity wrestling team.

Candus Thomson

A graduate of the old school, Candy Thomson received an advanced degree in attitude from the Toy Department School of Snark, an unaccredited institution. She was raised by an Orioles/Colts fan mother and a Detroit Tigers/Cleveland Browns fan father. Moving away from their influence to Boston in 1971, she became a fan of all sports New England, including Yaz, the Whalers and the New Hampshire presidential primary, of which she covered four.

After nearly two decades in the wilderness, with her system crying out for Old Bay, she found her way in 1988 to The Sun, where she collected a paycheck as a reporter and an editor. She snagged the gig of outdoors writer in 2000 and managed to fast talk her way to the 2002, 2004 and 2006 Olympics. Thomson, a founding member of the U.S. Luge Writer's Association, loves almost all sports -- the stranger, the better.

Childs Walker

Childs Walker's colleagues might love to rip him because he went to that bastion of snootiness, Gilman. But hey, it's a good school and unlike most of them, he really did grow up here, loving life when the Orioles won the World Series in 1983 and hating Robert Irsay when the Mayflowers rolled out a few months later. He has written for The Sun since 2001 and for the sports department since 2005. Who else has written about cricket, rowing, professional wrestling, dog fighting, NASCAR and horse herpes in that span? Well, probably no one. And he'll also whip you at fantasy baseball (football, not so much.) He has the fullest shelf of sports books, the largest collection of MMA DVDs and the deepest obsession with baseball statistics of anyone in The Toy Department. So yeah, he's a big dork.