Bonds quest draws little support from fans…

Only about four in 10 baseball fans are rooting for Barry Bonds to break the career home run record and most think he knowingly took steroids, according to a poll showing stark racial divisions in how the San Francisco Giants' slugger is viewed.

Still, most fans think Bonds should end up in the Hall of Fame. He has 10 homers this season and 748 lifetime - 7 shy of Hank Aaron's record, one of the most revered in sports.

In the poll by latinobaseball.com 38 percent said they are rooting for Bonds to break Aaron's record, while 51 percent said they hope he falls short and 10 percent had no opinion. Twenty-eight percent of whites and nearly 75 percent of blacks said they were hoping Bonds succeeds.

Nearly three quarters said they think Bonds knowingly took the performance-enhancing drugs, which he has long denied. Just more than a third of blacks - and three-fourths of whites - shared that view.

Of those who think he used steroids, two-thirds said that makes him a cheater - even though major league baseball was not testing for the drugs at the time. There was no racial breakdown for that question.

Nearly six in 10 said Bonds should be elected to the Hall of Fame, including majorities of both races. About as many said they believe he has been treated fairly, including a third of blacks and six in 10 whites.

Of those who think his treatment has been unfair, more blacks and whites say it is because of his alleged steroid use than because of his race.

The Latinobaseball.com poll involved telephone interviews with 811 adult baseball fans from April 1 to June 15. Its margin of sampling error was plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. Those surveyed included 227 blacks, for whom the margin of sampling error was 9 percentage points.