What was going on when I was born?

DETROIT T HEY know about good times and hard times in Detroit. Take the automobile industry, which has had both in the last three years. Or, take the local baseball team, which has had both in the last three months. Economists can explain the fluctuations in automobiles. But nobody can fully explain the ball club, the Detroit Tigers. They opened the season with a record rush by winning 35 of their first 40 games, and people started projecting that they might win 120. Twice, they won nine straight; twice, they won seven straight. Then foreign competition started making inroads, as it once did with automobiles. The Toronto Blue Jays won 19 of 24 games, the Tigers lost 8 of 12, and suddenly the good times turned into hard times. Then the Tigers steadied and began winning again, though not at the old rate.

Carl Lewis will be in the Olympics. By winning the 100-meter dash tonight in the United States Olympic track-and-field trials, the world's best sprinter and long jumper also won berths in two Olympic events - the 100-meter dash and the 400-meter relay. Lewis hopes to equal Jesse Owens's 1936 achievement of four gold medals. Here, on the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum track, where the Olympic competition will begin in seven weeks, he ran away from probably the strongest sprint field ever assembled.

Jack Greenberg, director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., surveyed the crowd on the roof of 99 Hudson Street, the new home of the organization he has led for the last 23 years. ''Professor of law at U.C.L.A.,'' he said, as he scanned from right to left. ''Law professor at Harvard. Head of Queens Legal Services. Lawyer for Center for Law in the Public Interest in Los Angeles. Head of urban law clinic at City University. Family Court judge and professor at N.Y.U.''

Swale, the colt who won the Kentucky Derby last month and the Belmont Stakes nine days ago, died yesterday morning after collapsing suddenly outside his stable at Belmont Park. Veterinarians at first assumed he had suffered a heart attack, but a team of surgeons and pathologists performed a three-hour autopsy that revealed no evidence to support that diagnosis. They said the cause of death was unknown and that they could not rule out the possibility of foul play. They said that further tests would take two weeks or more to complete, and that there was no guarantee that an official cause of death would ever be established. Dr. Robert Fritz, the colt's attending veterinarian, said that the three most likely diagnoses, in descending order of likelihood, were, ''Heart failure of some kind, a stroke, or - and I hate to say it - some toxic substance.''

Greg Norman, the Australian known best for his 300-yard drives, sank a 40- foot par putt at the 72d and last regulation hole of the 84th United States Open today to tie Fuzzy Zoeller and set up an 18-hole playoff for the championship Monday at Winged Foot's West course. Zoeller, who birdied four holes in a row on the front nine, held a three- shot lead over Norman with five to go, but the happy-go-lucky Zoeller bogeyed two of those final five holes. Norman birdied the 14th hole and scrambled for spectacular pars at each of the last three to finish in the deadlock at 4-under-par 276. Norman appeared to have lost his chance when his 6-iron approach to the 18th hole sailed way right into the crowded bleachers a hundred feet from the green. After a free drop just in front of the seats, Norman pitched to the green, but his ball rolled to the left fringe. From there, the Australian rolled in the long putt that broke four to five feet from left to right and fell into the middle of the cup.

I T was a quiet Sunday morning at the barns, handlers walking horses and washing them down, when Shon Selby heard ''that funny sound'' he will not soon forget. Selby, a groom for Woody Stephens, was standing at the edge of Barn 3, idly watching Swale, the Kentucky Derby and Belmont champion, being groomed a few yards away. ''As soon as Woody turned his back, the horse just raised up on his hind legs, and I heard that funny sound. Rrrrruh. Just like that. At first I figured he's having a bellyache, but then he dropped back, his tongue hanging out of his mouth, and I knew it was more than a bellyache.''

Government parties, both of the left and right, suffered defeats in balloting for the European Parliament in the 10 member countries of the Common Market, according to computer projections and partial results released today. The most striking loser appeared to be the French left, with the French Communist Party making its poorest showing since World War II, according to the projections. In Britain, the Conservatives lost seats to the Labor Party, and in West Germany, the Christian Democrats also lost ground. The biggest successes were also divided between left and right. In Italy, computer projections indicated that the Communist Party, benefiting from a strong sympathy vote after the death of its leader, Enrico Berlinguer, was running even with the Christian Democrats, raising the possibility of the Communists becoming the country's biggest vote-getter in a national election for the first time.

David Paul was a college sophomore tinkering with electronics when he installed a car phone in his year- old Chevy convertible in 1958, and he has not been without one since. ''It was a toy back then,'' he said. ''The communication was terrible. It was scratchy and the transmission was awful.''

Balloting for local councils was held throughout Poland today in an atmosphere of calm, but with few signs of public enthusiasm for this first Polish election since martial law was imposed in December 1981. In the capital, clandestine calls for mass demonstrations made earlier by the Solidarity underground were overwhelmingly ignored. Only two perfunctory protests were observed as legions of plainclothesmen maintained vigilant patrols at the polling places and in the streets. Boycott Results Are Unclear The louder appeals for an election boycott, made directly and obliquely by influential opponents of the Government, appear to have been heeded though it remained unclear in what measure. Edward Szymanski, secretary of the National Election Commission, said at midnight that around the country the voter turnout had averaged 75 percent. In the regions around the cities of Lodz and Cracow, only 64 percent of the registered voters cast ballots, while in Leszno 87 percent voted.

No one remembers exactly when it began. But the fear, the beatings, the brutality in a special ward of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens did not end until after a mentally ill patient had died while bound in a cloth straitjacket, his throat crushed. The workers in the so-called secure unit found themselves locked day after day in a hospital ward that came to resemble a penitentiary - but one without bars to separate the staff from men they called inmates. Nurses and orderlies say they were abandoned by their superiors and forced to make decisions that, under the law, could be made only by doctors. Regulations about medication were ignored, workers say, as were their complaints about dangerous understaffing in a ward that housed the most violent, most severely ill patients at Creedmoor, a huge state facility in Queens Village.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York is negotiating with New York City to resolve church concerns that a mayoral ban on discrimination against homosexuals by agencies doing business with the city may violate church teachings. The archdiocese has about $60 million in contracts with the city to provide such services as caring for disabled and emotionally disturbed children and those from broken homes. The contracts, which are subject to Mr. Koch's antidiscrimination order, are up for renewal this month. Earlier this year, the city refused to renew seven contracts worth $4 million with the Salvation Army for child-care services because the group refused to adopt the city's ban on discrimination against hiring homosexuals.

MONDAY, JUNE 18, 1984 Companies Mismanagement at the Zimmer nuclear plant cost $1.3 billion or more, according to an audit ordered by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. If the commission accepts the audit, it could mean that the utility's customers would be spared from paying at least part of that amount. (Page D1.)