October 8, 1984

The San Diego Padres completed one of the theatrical comebacks in playoff history today when they knocked out Rick Sutcliffe in the seventh inning, rallied to defeat the Chicago Cubs, 6-3, won their third consecutive game after two losses and captured their first National League pennant. They became the first team to win the league's playoff after dropping the first two games, and they did it before a record crowd of 58,359 in Jack Murphy Stadium against a pitcher who had won 15 games in a row since June 29. ''We had them by the throat,'' said Dallas Green, the general manager of the Cubs, ''and let them get away.'' Umpires Strike Is Over The Padres got away in the fifth game of a tingling match that also saw the major-league umpires end their strike for higher postseason pay. College and semipro umpires had officiated the playoffs in both the National and American Leagues until today, when both sides agreed to binding arbitration by Peter Ueberroth, the new commissioner of baseball. Four umpires who live in the San Diego area were quickly rounded up to call the game that decided the pennant. (Page C5).

Guests at Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza hotels are pampered with doorman and bellman service, the choice of dining in one of the hotels's two restaurants, a free morning newspaper, maid service in the evening - and help with entertainment, transportation, or secretarial needs. By contrast, when travelers check into a Hampton Inns hotel, a chain of ''no-frills'' hotels also owned by Holiday Inns Inc., they find no doormen, no bellmen, not even a restaurant. These new Holiday Inn hotels - one chain designed to appeal to the affluent, the other to the budget-conscious - exemplify a new development in the $29.7 billion hotel industry: product specialization, in which hotel companies create new lines of hotels with different features to appeal to different economic segments of the traveling public. Of course, there have always been cheap hotels and expensive hotels. But rarely have both been developed by the same companies, and never has the market been chopped up into so many segments.

Israel is willing to consider withdrawing its troops from Lebanon in return for a ''nonwritten'' Syrian commitment to keep its forces where they are and to prevent infiltration southward by Palestinian guerrillas, Israeli officials said today. The officials, speaking on the eve of Prime Minister Shimon Peres's visit to Washington, said that in exchange for a pullout, the Israelis would also insist on an expanded deployment of United Nations forces in southern Lebanon as well as a role for the Israeli-backed militia known as the South Lebanon Army. But, in contrast to their previous proposals, the Israelis are no longer insisting that Syrian troops withdraw from Lebanon, that there be a formal signed withdrawal accord, or that Israel get political concessions from the Lebanese Government, the officials said. U.S. Mediation Is Sought The officials, who are involved in the formulation of Israeli policy, said they believed the Israeli proposals were a realistic basis for negotiations with the Syrians and that Mr. Peres would try to enlist the Reagan Administration's help in playing some kind of mediation role with Damascus. The Israeli Prime Minister, who was in New York today, is to begin talks in Washington with Reagan Administration officials on Monday.

After a nearly three-week hiatus in the Treasury's note and bond financings, this week's auctions - $5.5 billion of seven-year notes and $4 billion of new 20-year bonds - do not seem to have put much upward pressure on interest rates. ''For the moment, with evidence of moderating economic growth rates, together with somewhat easier monetary conditions, we are enjoying a respite from interest-rate pressures,'' Thomas S. Johnson, president of Chemical Bank, said in a speech last week to the Financial Women's Association. Evidence of slower economic growth has already helped reduce the yield of the 30-year Treasury bond to around 12.18 percent, down from 12.6 percent in early September and 14 percent in late May. Short-term rates have also fallen. Three-month Treasury bills traded around 10 1/8 percent late last week, down from about 10 5/8 percent as recently as Sept. 4.

A decade is but a moment in the life of an empire that traces its origins to Solomon and Sheba. But in only 10 years since the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie, a new Ethiopia has been born. Guided by ''scientific socialism,'' Lieut. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam and the small circle of military men who rule have completed the structures that are transforming Ethiopia from a feudal monarchy into a Communist dictatorship. Western diplomats and Ethiopians interviewed in September said Colonel Mengistu, or Comrade Chairman Mengistu, as he is now called, was more firmly in control and stronger politically than ever before. The experts also agreed that for the foreseeable future, Ethiopia was likely to remain hostile to the United States and firmly allied to the Soviet Union, despite the country's dependence on huge donations of grain each year from the West.