Mania

This is a major coup for WWE, to have Mickey Rourke in the ring at the company's marquee show. I think it's bigger than Donald Trump at WrestleMania 23 and certainly bigger than Floyd Mayweather's match last year. ( For more, go to baltimoresun.com/ringposts)

If you're seeking the boundary between Ravens country and Steelers territory, look no farther than the floor of a ballroom in Hagerstown. The dividing line that separates fans of the two NFL teams will run down the middle of the Grand Ballroom at the Hager Hall Conference and Event Center. The owners of the expansive complex have invited fan clubs of both teams to watch tomorrow's AFC Championship showdown, and they will split the room. Purple-and-black chairs on one side, yellow-and-black on the other.

I just cannot muster any excitement about a Tampa Bay Rays-Philadelphia Phillies World Series. If only the Fall Classic could be more like WrestleMania. By that, of course, I mean scripted. One of the reasons WrestleMania rarely disappoints is that Vince McMahon and his creative team are pulling the strings to ensure star-studded matchups and intriguing story lines. (For more, go to baltimoresun.com/ringposts)

They are stressed-out professionals looking to soothe themselves on sleepless nights or recent college graduates trying to hack out work in the new-media world. Some do it the old way, staring at game film, attending workouts and picking the brains of scouts. But others simply watch a lot of college football and fire from the hip, just like their buddies who think the Ravens need a quarterback right now. In the past decade, we have become a nation of NFL draft experts. A job once reserved for a few hundred team employees and a handful of media obsessives is now shouldered by thousands of fans, their predictions flying as quickly as their fingers on the keys of their home computers.

Raymond Berry hasn't caught a pass for the Baltimore Colts in 40 years. But, to this day, when he travels the country, people approach him to talk about the perfect routes he ran on Sunday afternoons at Memorial Stadium. If they don't come in person, they write letters, sharing memories their fathers and grandfathers passed down about Berry and John Unitas and Lenny Moore. Tom Matte still lives in town, so he gets it even more. What was it like, people want to know, replacing Unitas in a pinch, having to read the plays off a wristband during the 1965 stretch run?

When Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling took Albus Dumbledore out of the proverbial Hogwarts School closet the other night, proclaiming that she always intended the wizard and headmaster in her popular series as a gay character, a loud ovation swelled from the main floor at New York's Carnegie Hall to the balcony where Clark B. Merrill was seated. "It was J.K. Rowling unplugged," said Merrill, a systems administrator from Roland Park who won tickets to the event Friday evening. "She doesn't have anything to hide anymore."

On a cool, breezy afternoon, freshman Leah Hartley wandered the quad at Anne Arundel Community College searching for her future. The 18-year-old North County High School graduate approached a table with engineers, saw the guts of a computer microchip and turned away quickly, convinced that electrical engineering was not her cup of tea. She passed by a group of teachers, ignoring their spiel, but taking them up on their offer of a free post-it pad. But...

Tristan Hinman, 12, usually races across the pool in Columbia Neighborhood Swim League meets. But Saturday, Tristan had all night to swim laps. He and more than 50 Phelps Luck Snappers swam for pledges and donations to the Special Olympics aquatics program in an overnight Swim Mania at Phelps Luck pool. "I think it's a good idea because they should have a chance to swim, too," Tristan said. While every CNSL team holds a charity event, the Snappers have formed a bond with the Special Olympics athletes, who swim with the Snappers every year at Swim Mania.

This month represents the pinnacle of Potterdom. With a new film and final book, it's a double-dose of the adventures of the boy wizard. And nowhere has this fanboy frenzy been more intense than on the Internet. Harry Potter Web sites such as MuggleNet (mugglenet.com) and The Leaky Cauldron (the-leaky-cauldron.org) have been buzzing with excitement since the release dates were announced early this year. On Wednesday, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth in the blockbuster movie series, arrives in theaters.

"Jennifer Webb" introduced herself and began asking questions. What's your name and where do you work? What kind of things do you do at work? "My name is Chantelle, and I work at Northrop Grumman Information Technology," answered Pamela Ezzat, the director of K-12 programs at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who was participating in the mock panel. "I travel all over the world, and my company pays for it." Six questions later, the discussion ended. But while the interviewer led the conversation, two students led the interviewer.