Votes

The Mount Washington School is vying for a $50,000 grant from Clorox, and asking for the Baltimore city community's help to secure it. The school entered into the Clorox CompaNy's "Power a Bright Future" competition under which the company plans to dole out $200,000 to give to schools across the country.  Mt. Washington is among nearly 2,500 schools that have entered to win one of seven grants,  which it plans to put toward boosting its...

Orioles executive vice president Dan Duquette, who engineered one of the best turnarounds in baseball this season by taking the long suffering Orioles to the postseason for the first time in 15 years, was surprisingly shut out in the voting for this season's Sporting News Executive of the Year award , which goes to the game's top front office exec. Athletics general manager Billy Beane, whose Oakland team dramatically won the AL West on the final day of the regular season, received the award Wednesday night at the annual GM meetings in Indian Wells, Calif.

This season's Most Valuable Oriole, center fielder Adam Jones, placed sixth in this year's American League Most Valuable Player voting. Jones became the Orioles' highest vote-getter in AL MVP balloting since Miguel Tejada placed fifth in 2004. He finished just out of the top-five finalists, just seven points short of fifth-place finisher Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers and well ahead of seventh-place finisher Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees by 43 points. "Pretty humbled," Jones tweeted Thursday night.

Kordell Stewart was still playing his Slash role when he was given credit for a 5-yard, second-period touchdown catch in the Pittsburgh Steelers' 20-16 victory over the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC title game two years ago.The only problem was that Stewart's foot touched the back line and the touchdown shouldn't have counted. But the officials missed it.Combined with the final play of that game, when the officials correctly ruled -- but easily could have been screened on the play -- that Aaron Bailey didn't catch a Hail Mary pass in the end zone, that game revived the debate over instant-replay review of officiating calls.

Yes, he does have the votes for his realignment plan, commissioner Bud Selig said Wednesday. After Selig postponed an owners meeting scheduled for June, a baseball lawyer said the he did not have enough votes to adopt the plan that would move Arizona to the American League and Tampa Bay to the National League, among other elements. "I do have the votes," Selig said by telephone from his Milwaukee office. He postponed the meeting to early July, he said, to explore other possible alignments and schedules before making a final decision.

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ARE AMERICANS happy? Are we a kinder, gentler nation? Or are many of us filled with hatred for each other? And if we are seething and gnashing our teeth, how many haters are there?These are questions you don't see answered by any polls. And there's a good reason for that. A pollster can't pick a name out of a phone book and say: "Good afternoon, I am from the Brainpicker Organization, and we are taking a poll. Do you have a seething hatred for anyone because of their race, religion or ethnic origins?"

After the tabulation of absentee ballots yesterday, Del. Nancy S. Jacobs, an Abingdon Republican, eked out a 142-vote win in the race for state Senate in Harford County's District 34."I am very excited," Jacobs said after the final tally of votes at the American Legion hall in Bel Air gave her a victory over fellow Del. Mary Louise Preis, a Democrat. "I went into this 62 votes ahead and I'm now 142 to win."The race was hard-fought between the two, with heated exchanges centering on the procedure called "partial-birth abortion" by anti-abortion activists.

Four Baltimore City Council members, who mistakenly were recorded as voting for the construction of the Wyndham Inner Harbor Hotel in December, tried unsuccessfully last night to change their votes.The council denied the petition of John L. Cain, Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr., Helen L. Holton and Stephanie Rawlings to change the record by telling them, in essence, "you snooze, you lose."Upset by his colleagues' reactions, Cain threatened last night to sue the city. He contends that Council President Lawrence A. Bell III violated the City Charter because he didn't allow members to vote individually on the hotel issue.

There is more to baseball than home runs, and A's outfielder Rickey Henderson has the American League's Most Valuable Player award to prove it.Henderson won the award yesterday. And he received it ahead of Cecil Fielder, who hit 51 homers for the Detroit Tigers.Fielder was the first player to hit 50 or more homers in a season since George Foster hit 52 for the Cincinnati Reds in 1977, but Henderson was recognized for his overall contributions in helping the A's to a third consecutive AL championship.