Milwaukee ? It took six months of negotiating for baseball commissioner Bud Selig to get the tough steroid policy he wanted, mere minutes for baseball owners to approve it.

Owners voted unanimously Thursday to ratify the new drug deal, which includes a 50-game suspension for a first positive test. The players’ association executive board still has to sign off on the deal, but that’s considered a formality.

“I think everybody’s very, very happy this is finally behind us,” Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt said. “It’s a very strong policy, and it’s great to have this behind us so we can talk about baseball, not steroids.”

The union’s executive board will decide when it meets Dec. 5-9 in Henderson, Nev., whether all players should vote to ratify the agreement or if board approval is sufficient. The new policy would start before spring training and could run for several years. Selig said he hoped it could be tied to the next collective bargaining agreement, which won’t be negotiated until next year or 2007.

“It was a very easy ratification,” Selig said. “Every vote was unanimous today, and that one was about as easy as it gets. As it should have been.”

Selig proposed an almost identical policy in April, but it took six months of wrangling – and the threat of federal legislation – before the players’ union agreed to it Tuesday.

Players will be suspended 50 games without pay for a first offense, 100 games for a second offense, and a lifetime ban for a third. The sport’s current penalties are a 10-day suspension for a first offense, 30 days for a second offense and 60 days for a third. The earliest a player could be banned for life is a fifth offense.

“Baseball clearly did the right thing,” San Diego Padres owner John Moores said. “It took a lot longer than it should have, but it got done.”

And baseball now can say it has the toughest drug policy in American pro sports.