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Now that the odious Barry Bonds is out of baseball, most likely for good (in every sense of the word), the bonds record of note these days are being set in the Treasury market. With virtually no fanfare, the 30-year “long bond” traded under a yield of 4% — a “3 handle,” in market parlance — for the first time since that maturity started to be offered regularly in 1977. The current long bond touched 3.91% at midmorning in New York as investors fled the stock market and latched onto the rally in Treasuries, but ticked up to 4.02% as the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) moved into positive territory at midday. Grizzled market veterans who lived through the dark days of the early 1980s, when bonds were considered “certificates of confiscation” and the 30-year yield touched 15%, find such yield levels hard to believe. But yields on 20-year Treasuries hovered around 4% in the fall of 1961, when Roger Maris hit 61 homers, breaking Babe Ruth’s single-season home-run record of 60, and a mark that would stand until the steroid era of the 1990s. The low yield for 20-year Treasury bonds was touched in July, 1954, at 2.57%, baseball’s golden era when Willie, Mickey and the Duke patrolled center field in New York.