What was going on when I was born?

Darryl Strawberry agreed today to a long-term contract with the Mets that he said would foreclose any future haggling and provide the security he needs ''to make the most of my career.'' The contract was neither drawn nor disclosed, and it will not be signed for perhaps a week. But it was believed to run for five years with a complex set of annual raises, incentive bonuses and deferred payments that could total as much as $4 million. The duration of the contract was a surprise because Strawberry has played just under two years in the big leagues and cannot become a free agent until the season of 1990. Also, as a slugging outfielder with great potential, he could conceivably reach peaks of performance in the next couple of years that would be worth millions. But both he and the Mets made it clear that they were entering a long-term deal for one purpose: stability.

WILLIAM C. RHODEN St. John's, soothed by a packed crowd overflowing with emotion, ended its most successful regular season yesterday by beating Providence, 72-53, at Alumni Hall to win the Big East season title outright for the first time. The capacity crowd of 6,545 had come to see a game and a celebration. The primary object of their affection was Chris Mulllin, the 6-foot-6-inch senior who was playing his last game before a home crowd on the Redmen's Queens campus. The all-America forward, who had led his team to the top of the national rankings, scored 18 points and was treated to several long standing ovations as St. John's finished the season with a 25-2 record, 15-1 in the conference.

Yasir Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said today that he was firmly committed to his agreement with Jordan on a joint approach to seeking peace in the Middle East. But, in an interview, he denounced the United States for its ''shameful response'' to the Jordanian-P.L.O. accord and its ''hypocritical'' refusal to recognize the Palestinian group. ''They called for an agreement between Arafat and King Hussein,'' Mr. Arafat said of the Reagan Administration. ''But when we signed it, they asked us for more. There is no wish to arrive at a peace settlement.''

NOT long ago a psychologically oriented consulting firm was hired to help a billion-dollar bank set up a succession plan. As consultants typically would in such a case, the firm, Rohrer, Hibler & Replogle, asked the bank's chief executive officer to pick potential successors from his 10 top executives. They were all staunchly loyal - the shortest time any of them had worked for the bank was 15 years. Yet the C.E.O. could not in good conscience suggest promoting any of the men. Not one had shown initiative or leadership potential in his long tenure with the company. In fact, the C.E.O., by nature a paternal man, had been covering up each of his managers' mistakes and, at times, actually doing their work for them. The C.E.O. retired in despair and his successor was hired from outside. Within

As 1985 unfolds, the ranks of the unemployed should thin, partly because the economy is still improving and partly because the nation's labor force is not growing as fast as the number of jobs, according to M.D. Levy, chief economist of the Fidelity Bank of Philadelphia. He noted: ''Demographic patterns tell us that the number of people that will be entering the labor force this year, 3.1 million, continues the slight, but steady decline that began several years ago.''

Chief's Crown and Proud Truth have emerged as the clear early favorites for the Kentucky Derby, and in that order, although the respective purses they won in separate races at Gulfstream Park today do not reflect that ranking. Proud Truth, five for six since beginning his career last December, made a bold late charge to win the $300,000 Florida Derby by a neck over Irish Sur. Chief's Crown, making his first start of the year, scored a handy 3 1/4-length victory in the $51,320 Swale Stakes half an hour earlier. Proud Truth's winning time of 1:50 for a mile and an eighth, though, was mediocre at best, slower than 12 of the last 20 Florida Derbies and two and two-fifth seconds slower than Swale's winning time a year ago. Chief's Crown's time of 1:22 2/5 for seven furlongs in the Swale translated to a far superior performance. Even so, it was two-fifths slower than another 3-year-old, Rhoman Rule, turned in earlier in the day in an allowance race, suggesting that the Derby picture may be more wide open than it appears.

Until they bought a video cassette recorder a year ago, Gretchen and Gregg Lyle of Los Angeles went to the movies two or three times a month. Now, Mrs. Lyle says, they hardly ever go. Instead, they rent at least one movie each weekend and watch it at home. ''It's changed the whole pattern of our weekends,'' Mrs. Lyle said as she scooped up dollar-a-day rental copies of ''Raiders of the Lost Ark'' and ''All of Me'' and pressed through a bustling throng of patrons selecting other films at the Warehouse Record store here. ''It's cheaper than going out,'' she said. ''We don't have to worry about baby sitters, and I make the popcorn myself instead of paying $1.50 for it.''

year-old office boy at the former Harborside Terminal on the Hudson River waterfront here, Michael W. Sonnenfeldt used to eat lunch on the south pier and watch the ships go by. ''I was into transcendental meditation then,'' he told a visitor, ''and I felt that, in some way I still couldn't understand, I was destined to play a role in the development of the area.'' Today, at 29, Mr. Sonnenfeldt is one of two partners (the other, David M. Fromer, a real-estate consultant, is 30 years his senior) who own the terminal's three warehouses and two piers and are transforming them, for $400 million, into the Harborside Financial Center, an office complex catering to companies specializing in finance and trade. Harborside is one of more than 20 developments - some only on paper, others in the groundbreaking stage, still others all but complete - that are expected eventually to transform 18 miles of shorefront into what has been called a new ''Gold Coast.'' It has not been without its troubles.

THE Rev. John P. Gould is, by calling, a peaceful man. However, last week he predicted that should he have to go to court to defend his church's right to shelter the homeless, ''then we're going to have World War III right here in Yonkers.'' For much of last month, Mr. Gould and the 60- member Calvary Center Church of which he is pastor have been at the center of a controversy extending well beyond Yonkers. City officials are trying to stop the church from housing the homeless, charging that a shelter in a residential neighborhood violates zoning. Mr. Gould says that the shelter is part of his church's mission and that short of a final legal decree it will not be closed. Both sides are trying to head off a courtroom confrontation by attempting to find a suitable alternative facility. In the interim, the city has delayed initiating legal proceedings to close the existing shelter. Mr. Gould said that another site could be approved by his congregation, perhaps even this week, but if it is not, the shelter, which can accommodate up to 10 people, will remain open even in the face of a lawsuit.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz and President Daniel Ortega Saavedra of Nicaragua met for an hour here today and appeared to clear the way for a resumption of the Central American peace efforts of the Contadora group. After the meeting, Mr. Shultz played down the importance of Nicaragua's decision this week to suspend the acquisition of new arms systems and to reduce the number of its Cuban military advisers, saying it ''raises more questions than it answers.'' 'Contadora Process' Stressed ''I don't know that anything much has changed,'' Mr. Shultz continued, ''though perhaps there is the recognition all round that the center of negotiation must be the Contadora process and that the sooner everyone gets back to that process the better.'' The work of the Contadora group, which consists of Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Panama, was interrupted earlier this year by a dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua over a Nicaraguan youth who was arrested Dec. 24 after taking asylum in the Costa Rican Embassy in Managua.

It was late one night last week when a couple of college basketball officials decided to stop at the hotel coffee shop in Syracuse to have something to eat. A man and woman sat down at the table next to Larry Lembo and Jimmy Howell. The man and the woman were wearing Syracuse University sweatshirts but did not recognize the men who are called zebras by the fans when they are not being called less flattering names. Lembo, the mischief maker, decided to solicit an opinion from the fans about the performance of the officials in that night's Pittsburgh-Syracuse game, the one that Lembo and Howell had just completed. Syracuse won, 80-72.

The first Broadway production of Arthur Schnitzler's ''Affairs of Anatol,'' starring the young, gifted and doomed John Barrymore, opened Oct. 14, 1912 to reasonably favorable notices. The unsigned review in The New York Times reported that it ''sends one from the theater in a pleasant state of mind,'' which was surely not the dramatist's primary intention. The following Sunday, the Times critic mildly took note of a few reader demands that he denounce this Viennese frolic through one man's ''amatory'' adventures; although he agreed that some theatergoers might consider the play unsuitable for the young, he still thought it good fun for anyone mature enough to resist corruption. In post-Sexual Revolution America, ''Anatol'' isn't likely to bruise public sensibilities or contribute a whole lot to general debauchery, but if Ellis Rabb is right and if he succeeds at the job at hand, it will offer a darker, richer view of the character and a new vision of what the play is about. The piece, directed by Mr. Rabb and now called ''The Loves of Anatol,'' opens Wednesday at Circle in the Square with Stephen Collins as the title character, Philip Bosco as Max, the confidant and amused onlooker, and four actresses, among them Michael Learned, representing Cora and Annie and Gabrielle and Ilona and Emilie and Bibi and Annette.