July 6, 1986

When the questions persisted, Dennis Rasmussen allowed himself to finally think about the All-Star Game, about going to Houston over the three-day break this month and perhaps pitching in the sport's midseason showcase. And he grinned. There was a certain amount of satisfaction to the smile. Four months ago, Rasmussen was regarded as a distant shot to make the Yankees' pitching staff. Today, he sat back and absorbed his finest moment: a three-hit, 8-0 triumph over the Chicago White Sox, his ninth victory of the season and his first major league shutout.

PASSENGERS on NJ Transit buses and trains will be paying higher fares soon, but the increase is smaller than anticipated a few months ago. With the increase now finally official, riders will be paying an average 10.7 percent more on the agency's trains and buses, beginning July 20. In anticipation of a $5 million state subsidy delivered to the desk of Governor Kean last week, the amount of the total expected subsidy rose from $160 million to $165 million, and the fare increase was reduced from the earlier predicted one of 12.7 percent. Establishment of the fare increase came as NJ Transit's board of directors adopted the agency's $530 million fiscal 1987 operating budget, which will expire next June 30.

A team of Western scientists has entered the Soviet Union and is to be allowed to monitor its main underground nuclear test site for the first time since the dawn of the nuclear era. The plan calls for monitoring equipment to be set up at three sites within 100 miles of the main Soviet test site near Semipalatinsk, which is about 1,800 miles southeast of Moscow and is usually off limits to foreigners. Even if the Soviet Union maintains its current moratorium on nuclear testing, the equipment for the first time will give Americans data on how shock waves are transmitted through the Soviet site. Western scientists at remote monitoring locations can use the data to help calibrate estimates of the sizes of Soviet explosions, which are often open to debate. The project, sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group based in New York, is a case study in striking a deal, according to participants: As it turns out, there is something in it for all the principal parties, including the Reagan Administration, which opposes the scientists' goal of a nuclear test ban and could have stopped the project, had it chosen to do so.

BY now, almost everyone who watches television is familiar with Frank Bartles and Ed Jaymes, the lovable pair of geezers who hawk Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler from their porch. ''Ed took out a second [ mortgage ] on his house, wrote to Harvard for an M.B.A., and now we're preparing to enter the wine-cooler business,'' intoned Frank in the first of a series of more than 30 commercials that always end with him humbly thanking the viewers for their support. But don't let commercials fool you. Frank and Ed are fictional characters portrayed by novice actors. The two people really behind Bartles & Jaymes are not innocent rubes, but two of the shrewdest, most aggressive, most secretive and most feared men in the wine business - Ernest and Julio Gallo. And with one-year old Bartles & Jaymes, the Gallo brothers have stormed into first place in the booming wine cooler business, one of the few bright spots in an industry suffering from flat sales. That coup, which reversed a two-year decline in sales for Gallo, was only the latest of the remarkable string of successes that allowed the E.&J. Gallo winery to grow from a shed in the Great Depression into the world's largest winery. And the cooler's success has left its stunned competitors gaping in awe.

This is an era when an air of inevitability hangs over Centre Court the day the women's singles final is played at Wimbledon. Fans cannot help but think the match itself is just part of some elaborate ceremony ending with Martina Navratilova's raising the treasured challenge trophy above her head. There have now been seven such moments in Miss Navratilova's career - five in succession -an impressive montage to hang on her wall. It is not her fault that Wimbledon is a two-week exercise in futility for 127 aspiring women who only dream about winning. Miss Navratilova should not be blamed for depriving the all-England Lawn Tennis Club of the suspense found in a Sherlock Holmes movie and seen here in most men's singles finals.