Fans will debate the effect of steroids for years. Doug Pensinger/Getty Images

We can't now, suddenly, declare baseball squeaky clean. The scourge of steroids that has infected the game for so long -- some have suggested calling the last several years a Steroids Era, like the Deadball Era or the War Years -- has not magically disappeared. The stain it has left will stick around for some time. Maybe forever.

But the announcement Thursday of a tougher, more wide-ranging drug policy in Major League Baseball should be greeted with raucous cheers for all who take any kind of interest in the game, for anyone who cares about its legitimacy. Yes, the policy is overdue. Way, way overdue.

Nobody, though, ever accused baseball of being quick to change.

"I have been saying for some time that my goal for this industry is zero tolerance," said commissioner Bud Selig, who has been saying exactly that, for some length of time. "We are acting today to help restore the confidence of our fans in this great game."

The new drug-testing policy has most everything needed to help get baseball closer to that zero-tolerance mark that Selig so often crows about. Players who use performance-enhancing drugs now will be publicly identified, and they'll be suspended for 10 days -- without pay -- for a first positive test. If they backslide again, they'll get hit for 30 days, then 60 days, and then a year on a fourth offense.

The list of banned substances has expanded to include human growth hormone, THG, agents that mask steroids in tests, diuretics, ephedra and substances that act as precursors to steroids, like androstenedione, the substance that former Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire ingested when he hit 70 home runs in 1998.

Any performance-enhancing substance, in fact, that is regulated by the federal government goes on the list. And baseball's list will grow, too, as so-called "designer" steroids are discovered and put on the federally regulated list.

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It won't be as easy to cheat on the tests, either. Players will be tested at random, and during the offseason, too. No more getting off the juice just before a test. No more working the system.

"Our goal here," said players union boss Don Fehr, "was to try to come up with something that we believe would work ...

"I would be surprised that if, over time, this does not take care of the problem, virtually completely."

This new policy came together, over the past weeks and months, because of a series of intersecting circumstances.

One, baseball realized quickly that the drug policy it agreed to in the collective bargaining agreement with the players union in 2002 was toothless. Two, politicians, spurred by a mention of the steroids scandal by President Bush in his State of the Union address last year, jumped on the anti-steroids bandwagon and started putting pressure on baseball to clean up its act.

Fans became more vocal as well, questioning the legitimacy of a sport in which many players -- estimates varied from 5 percent to 75 percent -- may have been using performance-enhancing drugs.

Leaked testimony from the BALCO case, in which sluggers Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield and Barry Bonds all admitted using some sort of steroid, helped fuel the public outrage.

Finally, the players union relented. Under Fehr, the union has been reluctant to allow testing, claiming it an invasion of privacy. Faced with mounting pressure from owners, politicians and fans, though, the players let the union leaders know that testing, now, would be OK.

"In the last year or so, especially, a somewhat different consensus among the players emerged," Fehr explained during a conference call with reporters. "What you do is learn, with experience over time, and you move forward."

And that's where baseball goes now. Forward. Fans will debate the effect of steroids on the game for years. Questions will surround many of this generation's greatest sluggers for the rest of their lives. Barry Bonds will carry the questions, probably, into the Hall of Fame.

But the new drug policy should be in effect for the 2005 season. More suddenly than most anything ever happens in baseball, the sport will begin to clean up. Fans, hopefully, can stop wondering if that slugger is on the juice or if that pitcher is chemically bulked up.

Some players will fail tests. It'll be tough keeping up with others who would use performance-enhancing drugs to make millions. There are some shortcomings in the new policy, too. But this is a good start. Baseball is getting off the mark.

Finally, we can see an end to the Steroids Era.

John Donovan is a senior writer for SI.com.