What was going on when I was born?

FRESH from producing a $150 million profit for the Summer Olympics by doing the Games his way, Peter Ueberroth becomes the new commissioner of baseball tomorrow. He plans to do that job his way, too. ''I think the owners' perception of what I am and what I intend to be are probably not the same,'' Ueberroth said. ''I won't be a commissioner for the owners. I told them that several times. I'll probably have to tell them a lot more times. I will be commissioner for baseball.'' In taking that approach, Ueberroth said he would not represent the owners in the approaching negotiations for a new basic agreement between them and the players. Rather, he explained, he will try to induce the two sides to ''meet on some common grounds.''

Harrods, the elegant London department store, has always been on the ''must see'' list for tourists. But nowadays, Americans are flocking there for a different reason.

AMONG those rushing toward the gate of Penn Station's Track 17 during the evening rush hour can be found a new breed of commuter - not city emigres who have sought suburban greenery in which to raise children, but young, native Long Islanders who brave the daily trip for the sake of their urban jobs. Although the Long Island economy remains strong - employment figures have been running at record levels for months, and the unemployment rate has been about half that of the national averages - many people entering the job market in earnest are doing so in New York City. The number of commuters on the Long Island Rail Road continues to show a steady increase, indicating a preference among some for jobs in the city. By and large, it is the promise of career advancement and higher pay that lures the new commuters onto early morning trains. For some, it is the high city rents that keep them riding back eight hours later; for others, it is the calm and outdoor pleasures of Long Island life. Many have returned home after college, temporarily moving back into the family nest.

IN 1980, the automotive industry seemed to be on the road to irreversible ruin. The General Motors Corporation, the largest of the automakers, registered the first loss in its modern history -- a staggering $763 million. G.M., the Ford Motor Corporation and the Chrysler Corporation together sold a respectable 6.6 million cars that year but racked up a loss of nearly $4 billion. Four grueling years later, the industry has engineered a U-turn in the direction of solid profitability. The Big Three have all made changes -- in technology, design and in dealings with the Japanese -- that have improved their productivity and lowered dramatically the number of cars they need to produce to generate profits. While they are selling only slightly more cars than in 1980, the Big Three are expected to report huge profits this year. And earlier this month another hurdle was cleared with the tentative contract reached by the United Auto Workers union and G.M. Basically, what the pioneering settlement gives the largest automaker -- and the other auto companies, should they follow suit as expected -- is maximum flexibility in the way it does business.

EVEN Prince Paris got it wrong. His prize-giving of the golden apple led to his own death and the ruin of Troy. All human awards are fallible. Time and again, immortality goes to the blackballed, to the salon des refuses in which the Impressionist masters exhibited their officially rejected and ridiculed paintings. At the height of his genius, Schoenberg was turned down for a Guggenheim. The gentle soul who refused Einstein academic employment in Switzerland died peacefully not so very long ago. In the natural and exact sciences, nevertheless, error, blind oversight, are thought to be less frequent. There have been bizarre Nobel Prizes: a recent award half a century after the relevant discovery, two coronations of laureates who had, in fact, only perfected laboratory mechanics (one of whom is now reported to be the only Nobel Prize winner unemployed and in a marginal social circumstance). The Nobel in medicine, physics and chemistry has gone rather more often than probability would suggest to members of the Swedish Academy and establishment, i.e. to those closely involved in the choice of recipients. There has been bitchiness (was Jonas Salk denied the Prize because professional rivals resented the somewhat flamboyant presentation of his polio vaccine?). But on the whole, and across the decades, the far-flung network of scientists who nominate candidates and referee their work has honored true princes.

Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko's meetings with Reagan Administration officials concluded today with an agreement ''on a process of follow-up exchanges between the two sides,'' a senior State Department official said. Briefing reporters on Mr. Gromyko's final session, a two-hour meeting with Secretary of State George P. Shultz at the State Department, the official said it had been ''a constructive, useful meeting.'' Today's talks brought to a conclusion an unusual week of foreign policy activity that marked an interlude in President Reagan's re-election campaign. At the same time, White House officials have made no secret of their goal of using the meetings with Mr. Gromyko and others this week to enhance the President's ratings as a leader concerned about reducing world tensions. In Atlanta, Walter F. Mondale, the Democratic Presidential candidate, said that the Reagan-Gromyko meeting appeared to have ended in failure, and challenged the President to prove him wrong. Page 28.

JERUSALEM It was several years ago and Abba Eban had just signed on as host and narrator for an ambitious series that WNET/ Channel 13 would produce, ''Heritage: Civilization and the Jews.'' But the Israeli diplomat, who has a keen eye for political problems, saw trouble looming with the filming of the Ten Commandments. Israel was about to sign a peace treaty with the Egyptians. ''Although it was a bit premature,'' Mr. Eban said recently, ''I thought that since we were going to give the Sinai back, let's rush in and do the Ten Commandments before we have to depend on Egyptian bureaucracy.'' And so it came to pass that an expedition was organized and they climbed the 7,000-foot-high Mount Sinai, by jeep and by foot, and finished just in time.

After watching overbooked casino hotels nearby turn away guests, the developers of a 221-unit condominium in Atlantic City have converted the first three floors of their partially sold building into a hotel. ''It has turned out to benefit everyone concerned,'' said Philip E. Geiger, vice president and director of marketing for American Property Group's Marina Club condominium on Brigantine Boulevard and Route 30.

SECOND MARRIAGE By Frederick Barthelme. 217 pp. New York: Simon & Schuster. $15.95. IN ''Second Marriage'' Frederick Barthelme's characters eat or go out for food on practically every page. It doesn't nourish them very much - almost all of it is convenience food purchased on the run from Pie Country, Border Bill's, Long John Silver's, Burger King or Seafood in the Rough. But this fast-fried, Styrofoam-boxed, paper-bagged food, complete with individually wrapped packets of ketchup and tartar sauce, helps to give this extremely well done novel the arresting, slightly over- detailed superrealism of a group of Duane Hanson sculptures.

With most members of Congress eager to adjourn and get back to their campaigning, possibly irreconcilable differences over the civil rights of aliens last week threatened to shunt the long-pending immigration bill off onto a legislative siding. After several days of surprisingly fast-paced and productive give and take, House and Senate conferees deadlocked when Alan K. Simpson, prime sponsor of the Senate bill, balked at language in the House's version that forbids job discrimination on the basis of alien status. The conferees earlier agreed to fines and perhaps prison for employers who knowingly hired illegal aliens and to granting legal status to aliens who could prove that they had lived in this country continuously since Jan. 1, 1981, and hadn't broken any laws.

Because the highly competitive food and beverage industries are finding it more and more difficult to pass along increased costs to consumers, they have staged a widespread revolt against recent price rises by makers of linerboard and other packaging materials. The result: Instead of raising linerboard prices to $350 from $320 a ton, packaging companies are busily discounting their old prices to soothe the major food and beverage companies that buy 38 percent of their output.

'' ON Aug. 22 I sat here at my desk and was feeling very good that everything was in place for the school year,'' said Robert Huntz, principal of the Ossining High School. ''Everything was planned, and we were ready to open school. I had just mailed out schedule cards to all the students and it was on that day that our Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds came in and said, 'I think we may have a problem.' '' The problem, discovered in a routine check for leaks in the roofs of school district buildings, was the crumbling of concrete in the high school annex. The annex, which opened in 1957 and was originally the Ossining Junior High School, became part of the high school in the mid- 1960's. It was declared unsafe a week before school was scheduled to open. But Ossining High School is now functioning ''normally.'' Teachers do, however, move from area to area pushing shopping carts filled with books and other equipment, students are outdoors briskly walking - and sometimes running - to their makeshift classrooms and teachers are lecturing from the pulpits of nearby churches to students sitting in the pews.