What was going on when I was born?

At 7:20 this morning, 87 miles from John Kazmierczak's home here, a ''liberator'' pulled two levers, freeing 6,000 racing pigeons packed into wicker baskets on the back of a trailer truck. The race was on, as the pigeons went flying home to lofts all over central New Jersey, where owners like Dr. Kazmierczak waited to clock the birds' arrival times. Dr. Kazmierczak, a veterinarian, is one of thousands of participants in one of the metropolitan area's more esoteric sports: pigeon racing. ''You either love it or you can't understand it,'' he said. ''Sometimes, objectively, I can't really figure it out, but I'm addicted to it.''

New Jersey's Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control has begun an inquiry into charges that struggling liquor retailers have demanded kickbacks from salesmen for wholesale companies, the agency's director said yesterday. The director, John F. Vassallo, who was appointed to the post last March, said New Jersey's deregulation of alcohol prices two years ago had led to financial problems for small retailers and an increase in the number of bankruptcies among these companies. Mr. Vassallo said the allegations had come to the state's attention in ''various ways,'' including a number of anonymous letters to the division from salesmen complaining of kickbacks. He declined to provide specific information on the charges.

The record volume and record price advances on Wall Street last week have created a booming market in the financial community's newest trading instrument, stock index futures. Three exchanges - the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Kansas City Board of Trade and the New York Futures Exchange - have for the last few months offered investors, through futures contracts, the chance to bet on the direction of various stock exchange averages. Partly because of the intense competition among the exchanges, trading had been sluggish and erratic on all the markets until stock prices became volitile. Near the end of July, volume improved perceptibly, and it exploded last week, ignited by the surging stock market and sharp drops in interest rates. Now traders are heartened by large profits and the prospect of growing commissions and the exchanges are predicting that all the contracts will survive and flourish.

An article in Metropolitan Report on Saturday incorrectly identified the role of Barbara Fife in the campaign for the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor in New York.She is campaign manager for H. Carl McCall.

Mexico's confidence in its entire economic and political system has been badly shaken in recent weeks. In a matter of months, the country has been plunged from a period of unparalleled prosperity into its worst financial crisis in memory. Many Mexicans are still reeling from the shock, confused about what has happened, and why. At the same time, they feel angry and betrayed at having been led down the path of consumerism for five years only to be jerked back to the rough road of austerity for no apparent reason. Aggravating the uncertainty, President Jose Lopez Portillo, who is widely blamed for the crisis, is in his final months in office and his lame-duck administration has at times seemed virtually crippled. But President-elect Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado cannot provide immediate leadership because tradition requires that he remain out of view until his inauguration on Dec. 1.

IF Willie Wilson of the Kansas City Royals continues his batting pace (which is roughly 15 points ahead of his nearest pursuers) and wins the American League batting crown, he might mute his critics who have been chirping since his rookie year. It's odd that Wilson, who is about to bat over .300 for the fourth consecutive year, and who in 1980 was in the top 10 in seven offensive departments while leading the league in times at bat, runs, and hits, has garnered detractors. With the Yankees, such statistics would make him a millionaire and the object of scorn by management. An exercise in mental pepper might help divine Wilson's problem. First, Kansas City hasn't connoted clout since the collapse of the Prendergast political machine after Harry Truman's heyday. Also etched in our minds are the Royals' failures against the Yankees in playoff series with the diminutive Freddie Patek weeping in the dugout. And it is difficult to consider as menacing a club that plays in uniforms that look like Dr. Dentons and whose road color is powder blue. You begin to suspect their baselines are drawn with talcum powder.

In the early 1970's, a local plumber-turned-real-estateinvestor named Robert E. Woolley began to build some hotels that were quite unlike anything then alongside the highway. Not only did he serve his guests a free buffet breakfast each morning and complimentary cocktails every afternoon, but he also built every room as a suite. Instead of the usual hotel bedroom, there was a separate bedroom and sitting room, complete with a wet bar. Mr. Woolley called them ''Hometels.'' Granada Royale Hometels, no less. And he priced them to compete with most traditional hotels catering to the traveling business trade.

A group of 265 Palestinians, several of them carrying a large portrait of Yasir Arafat, stepped onto Jordanian soil today and were embraced by King Hussein. ''You have held the flag high and fought well for your rights,'' the King told the Palestinians during a brief ceremony a military airport. ''It's still a long struggle, but we are sure of victory.'' The Palestinians, part of the first contingent of 397 guerrillas who left Lebanon by ferry on Saturday, arrived from Cyprus in two Boeing jetliners, a 707 and a 727, which were chartered by the Palestine Liberation Organization and the United Nations, according to one of the pilots. Another 707 took a group of Iraqi-based Palestine Liberation Army men, believed to number 132, directly to Iraq.

In a move underlining the priority attached by the Kremlin to the controversial gas pipeline to Western Europe as well as the problems facing construction crews, the Soviet Government has ordered the pace of work on the 2,800-mile project to be more than doubled. An article in the Communist Party newspaper Pravda last week said that the two ministries principally involved had concluded that crews clearing the route and laying the pipe, as well as those building pumping stations and living quarters for operating personnel, would have to step up their tempo by ''two or two and a half times'' if the project is to be completed ahead of time, as ordered by the Kremlin. The disclosure appeared to confirm other indications that the huge construction battalions assembled for the project are running into problems meeting the schedule, which calls for the first gas to be delivered to a terminal point on the border between Czechoslovakia and West Germany in the spring of 1984. President Reagan's move two months ago to delay the pipeline's completion by reinforcing a ban on the use of equipment made in the United States or made under license from American companies jolted the Kremlin into a crash program aimed at demonstrating that Soviet industry could override the sanctions and still complete the project early.

The International Monetary Fund issued an annual report today noting ''widespread dissatisfaction and concern'' with global economic conditions. It warned that lasting prosperity would come only if governments showed the ''patience'' and ''courage'' to stick with restrictive anti-inflationary policies. The report of the 146-nation lending agency urged members not to yield to political pressures that would dissipate the hard-won progress against inflation through an ''untimely resort to expansionary policies.''

In an effort to gain Congressional approval, some supporters of the $98.3 billion tax act minimized its effects. They billed the measure as being mostly a matter of closing some tax loopholes and increasing taxpayer compliance. While largely correct, this characterization ignores some important provisions, tax experts say. For like most tax laws, the one that was passed and signed last week will have a substantial impact both on the way people manage their money and on a variety of business decisions. ''I think people are generally underestimating the impact of this law in a number of areas,'' said Alexander Zakupowsky, a partner at Deloitte Haskins & Sells in charge of national tax policy for the accounting firm. Not all of the effects of the new law will be readily apparent. Many of the provisions in the new law, which President Reagan signed on Friday, do not take effect until Jan. 1, 1983, or even later. And accountants and lawyers and other tax experts are just now studying what the new law says and what its full effect will be.

International The P.L.O. evacuation from Beirut was delayed by Israeli warships after Israeli officials objected to 20 jeeps being driven aboard a ship that was to take about 1,000 of the Palestinian guerrillas to Tunisia. Israel gave the ship sailing orders after an American guarantee was given that the jeeps would be unloaded before the ship reached its destination in Tunisia. (Page A1, Column 6.) A group of 265 Palestinian guerrillas arrived in Jordan after a stopover in Cyprus and were warmly received by King Hussein. The Palestinians were part of the first contingent of fighters who left Lebanon by ferry on Saturday. They were flown to Jordan from Cyprus in two jetliners that were chartered by the P.L.O. and the United Nations, according to one of the pilots. The other Palestinians in the initial contingent were flown to Iraq, where an official reception was held. (A1:4.)