Salas is suspended after failing drug test

Tampa Bay relief pitcher Juan Salas was suspended for 50 games Monday after becoming the first player this year to flunk a drug test under Major League Baseball’s testing program.

Salas tested positive for a performance-enhancing substance, the commissioner’s office said. His suspension will start today.

There were three suspensions last year under the program: New York Mets pitcher Yusaku Iriki, former Arizona pitcher Jason Grimsley and Mets reliever Guillermo Mota, who is serving his 50-game penalty at the start of this season.

*

The New York Yankees shipped struggling pitcher Kei Igawa to the minors and learned right-hander Scott Proctor was suspended four games and Manager Joe Torre was suspended one game by the commissioner’s office, a day after a skirmish between the Yankees and the Seattle Mariners.

The Yankees optioned Igawa to Class-A Tampa to make room on the roster for right-hander Matt DeSalvo, who started Monday night in his major league debut.

*

Detroit Tigers reliever Joel Zumaya is expected to be out for 12 weeks because of a ruptured tendon in his middle right finger. Right-hander Aquilino Lopez was called up when Zumaya went on the disabled list.

*

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.

In the poll by ABC News and ESPN, 37% said they are rooting for Bonds to break the record, while 52% said they hope he falls short. Twenty-eight percent of whites and nearly 75% 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 did not test for performance-enhancing drugs until 2003. 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 blacks and whites. The ABC-ESPN poll involved telephone interviews with 799 adult baseball fans from March 29 to April 22.