April 3, 1983

On a stormy August evening in 1981, a gray colt was led into the yearling sales ring at Saratoga and Roger Laurin prepared to raise his hand and bid on the colt. Suddenly all the lights went out in the pavilion. ''We took it as an omen,'' said Robert Levy today, a few minutes after walking out of the winner's circle at Hialeah Park after the Flamingo Stakes. ''The colt was by Little Current, and I figured that too little current made the lights go out. I wanted to name him Lights Out, but it was my partners' - Howard Kaskel and Bob Baker's - turn to pick the name.''

BY now the Phillies are old news, pardon the expression, but still i ntriguing: This season the Phillies will be fielding some of the o ldest players in baseball, and if they go on to win the World S eries, they would probably be the oldest team in history to do so. O n opening day, Tuesday against the Mets, each of the Phillies' s tarting players except one will be 30 years old or over. Two will be4 0 or over. Pete Rose, scheduled for right field, will be 42 next week, and Steve Carlton, the left-hander and last season's Cy Young Award winner, is 38. In the offseason, the Phillies obtained Joe Morgan, 39, to play second base, and Tony Perez, soon 41, to spell Rose at first and pinch-hit. They also picked up the outfielder Bill Robinson, 40 in June. In the bullpen are Ron Reed, 40, and Tug McGraw, 39 in August.

Paul Taylor, who studied art in college before being won over to the dance, is highly regarded for his astute taste in stage designers. His keen visual instincts, and predisposition to artistic adventure, have led him over the years to engage young artists who later went on to become some of the greatest names in modern American painting. Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Ellsworth Kelly all worked with him in the early days of his company and of their careers, and Alex Katz is no exception. A penniless young painter in 1960 when he began collaborating with Mr. Taylor, Mr. Katz is today one of the foremost proponents of modern realist painting. He is perhaps best known to the public, however, for the enormous mural of 23 women's heads, each 20 feet high, that he designed in 1977 to sit atop a Times Square building at 42d Street and Seventh Avenue. As a designer for the stage he is no less bold. His avowed goal is not to create sets that merely adorn the stage, but rather sets that are, in his phrase, ''aggressive.'' In those terms, Mr. Katz and Mr. Taylor would seem to be made for each other. Their latest collaboration, ''Sunset,'' will receive its world premiere on Wednesday, the second day of a month-long run of the Paul Taylor Dance Company at City Center.

JUST about everybody - in Washington as much as on Wall Street - agrees that the economy is off the ground after a severe recession. The preliminary ''flash'' estimate by the Commerce Department indicates that the gross national product rose at an annual rate of about 4 percent in the first quarter - subpar by standards of past economic recoveries, but still the best performance in two years. The crowds of Easter shoppers in the stores last weekend suggest that people are going back to work and are loosening up their purse strings. The consensus among forecasters is that the quarterly growth rate in the economy will accelerate to 5 percent or better by the end of the year. However, there is plenty to worry about. The fear -which is understandable in light of the sputtering performance of the United States economy for the past four years - is that interest rates may surge long before the recovery has a chance to gain momentum. This could easily choke off the boomlet in housing, and knock the automobile market back to the depressed levels registered last spring.

The Labor Department intends to issue new rules that relax requirements for Federal contractors to recruit and promote blacks, women and Hispanic people. The department has decided to go ahead with many of the proposals that generated intense criticism from civil rights advocates when they were first issued 19 months ago. But business organizations said the new affirmative action rules would be an improvement over the existing rules because they would reduce the burden on employers and eliminate some of the uncertainty about Federal requirements. 20,000 Companies Affected Labor Department officials said 20,000 to 30,000 companies, including nearly all the biggest corporations in the nation, were subject to affirmative action requirements because they did business with the Government. Other companies look to the Federal rules for guidance when they establish voluntary affirmative action programs.