Major League Baseball was slow on the uptake, but owners and players have finally come around on steroids.

On Thursday, the league adopted a new, tougher policy that includes more steroid tests and harsher punishments.

Every Major League player will be tested at least once during the season, and there will be random tests during the year, including offseason. More substances have been added to the banned list, including human growth hormone, and there’s a clause that bans substances that, in the future, would be regarded as steroids by the federal government.

Penalties finally have some teeth as well. Before the new rules, players caught using banned performance-enhancing drugs were ordered into counseling, but the rules violations were kept secret. Now, a positive test will earn first-time offenders a 10-day suspension without pay. A second offense brings a 30-day suspension. That increases until a fourth offense, when a player would be suspended for a year. And after the fourth positive test, the commissioner of baseball will set the punishment.

Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and players union Executive Director Donald Fehr don’t deserve more than cursory applause for the new deal. Baseball has been slow to act. It didn’t even begin testing for steroids until 2002, after the problem had gained a significant foothold on the sport.

It took serious criminal charges, threats from President Bush and members of Congress, the untimely death of 1996 Most Valuable Player Ken Caminiti – an admitted steroid user – and the tarnished reputation of one of the game’s biggest stars, Barry Bonds, to prompt an adequate response. Even now, the new policy does not cover amphetamines, a stimulant that can help increase player concentration.

Baseball was forced to act, and it has. The new policy was too long in coming.