LEAD: Before the game, Dave Johnson gathered the Mets and told them to quit worrying about their three-month slump. Go out and have some fun again, he said, and remember you're still in first place.

Listless Mets Lose, 1-0

LEAD: New York City got the Statue of Liberty from France, the Cloisters from Spain, and Babe Ruth from Boston. And it got the nickname Big Apple from - Columbia, S.C.?

Big Apple: New York Nickname With a Southern Accent?

LEAD: Ruth W. Messinger, City Councilwoman and permanent thorn in the city administration's side, is speaking in a measured, deliberate, no-nonsense monotone.

Metro Matters; She Is Outspoken And Out Running To Win Support

LEAD: In a fifth-floor hospital room, a woman worries about who will raise her son if she dies of AIDS. Nearby, another woman lingers, well enough to leave if she had a home but too sick to return to the streets.

Mission of an AIDS Unit Is Not to Cure, but to Care

LEAD: Leaders of the outlawed Solidarity trade union called a strike tonight at the big Lenin shipyard in Gdansk for Monday after the Government refused an earlier offer of talks with the union's national leaders to defuse a wave of labor unrest.

GDANSK SHIPYARD TO JOIN STRIKERS

LEAD:  Off Course?  A new analysis suggests that Robert E. Peary, credited with being the first to reach the North Pole, may have been miles from his goal. Page B7.  Buyout Offer for Wickes  Frustrated with Wall Street, the chairman of the Wickes Companies offered $2.6 billion to buy the maker of auto and home products.

INSIDE

LEAD:  COMPANIES  Wickes's chairman wants to take the company private in a leveraged buyout valued at $2.6 billion in cash and debt, with backing from Drexel Burnham Lambert. Sanford C. Sigoloff, the turnaround specialist who led Wickes out of bankruptcy in 1985, has grown frustrated with Wall Street as the company's stock failed to recover from the October plunge.

BUSINESS DIGEST

LEAD: Before he turned 13 and was placed in a psychiatric hospital, Mark Richards tried to burn down his home. He sexually abused his younger brother and terrorized him with a butcher knife.

Adoptive Parents Ask States For Help With Abused Young

LEAD: A devastating earthquake rumbled across eastern India and Nepal before dawn Sunday, killing more than 700 people.

AT LEAST 700 DEAD IN A MAJOR QUAKE IN THE HIMALAYAS

LEAD: The defeat was like all the others this summer. It began and then it was over, quickly, quietly, almost sadly for the Yankees. They played, they lost, they dressed and left. The lone exception was Don Mattingly, who sat in front of his locker yesterday and let his anger spill out.

Mattingly Hot After Yank Loss

LEAD: A new retailing concept, medium-sized specialty stores that provide clothing for affluent professional women in a setting where shopping can be quick and efficient, has run into problems.

A Hot Retailing Concept Runs Into Trouble

LEAD: As Yonkers enters a potentially pivotal week, it faces several possibilities - the jailing of four City Councilmen who have resisted a court-ordered housing desegregation plan, the resumption of bankrupting fines, or perhaps a resolution of the conflict between the city and the court. Still, many residents, developers and public officials are looking beyond the immediate turmoil to what the future holds for the embattled city of 194,000.

AWAITING RULING, YONKERS LOOKS BEYOND TURMOIL TO THE FUTURE

LEAD: Bob Dole, the Senate Republican leader, today added to complaints about his party's nomination of Senator Dan Quayle, saying his presence on the Presidential ticket would make it harder to retain the White House.

DOLE SAYS QUAYLE IS DAMAGING BUSH

LEAD: Richard R. Green will move into his first full academic year as New York City's Schools Chancellor next month resolved to further decentralize the 942,000-student school system and to broaden the role that schools and teachers play in the non-academic lives of their students.

New York's Chancellor Seeks To Broaden Teachers' Role

LEAD: In what United States Government agencies describe as a limited test program, about 100 American National Guardsmen have for the first time been deployed along the United States-Mexico border seeking to decrease the flow of drugs from Mexico.

National Guard Is Used in a Test To Curb Drug Flow From Mexico

LEAD: Sanford C. Sigoloff, the turnaround specialist who guided the Wickes Companies out of bankruptcy in 1985, said tonight that he and other members of management had agreed to take the company private in a leveraged buyout. Including debt that would be assumed, the deal is valued at $2.6 billion.

Managers Set Buyout Of Wickes

LEAD: Largely hidden from press and public attention by its complexity, a plan to revitalize the depressed United States uranium-mining industry with huge injections of public money has quietly won approval in the Senate and awaits action in the House.

U.S. Aid to Uranium Mining Meets Political Resistance

LEAD: It was an unlikely scene for a hostile takeover battle. The streets in this sleepy corner of Brooklyn were ghostly silent, save for an occasional subway train that passed overhead. Several locals were lazily leaning against parking meters. A few more slouched on stoops.

Savings Banks Attract Aggressive Acquirers

LEAD: A growing number of companies, anticipating that rapid growth in medical costs will continue, are seriously considering ways to limit their obligations for retired workers' health costs, benefits consultants say.

Cuts Sought In Retirees' Health Costs

LEAD: Seven people were killed and 33 others, including a dozen firefighters, were injured yesterday when a fire raced through a basement social club that had been operating illegally in the Bronx, the authorities said.

7 Killed and 33 Hurt As a Suspicious Fire Guts an Illegal Club

LEAD: BUDDY RYAN, twirling a whistle on a cord back and forth in his right hand, stalks the Philadelphia Eagles' practice as if he were a cop patroling a bustling beat. It is the last blistering day of the Eagles' two-a-day practices, and for players new and old, Ryan has left no doubt that this season his Eagles will fly all for one and one for all.

Eagles' 2 Black Quarterbacks Give Credit to Coach

LEAD: For the first time since the 1920's, the tide of immigration is at flood stage in New York City, with millions of Asian, Caribbean and European newcomers in search of a better life.

A Renaissance For Ethnic Papers

LEAD: Beneath the official expressions of praise for President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan after his death last week, American policy makers are quietly expressing the hope that the deaths of General Zia and many of his top military aides will bring a new opportunity to move Pakistan toward democracy.

Pakistan After Zia; Washington Regrets Death of a Solid Ally But Holds Out Hope for Democratic Change

LEAD: ''There's a big residue of good will about New York City schools. You might even call it a consensus. It's not simply the people who know that the future of the city is tied to the schools, but there is still a love for the New York City public schools by those who have been part of it. A lot of people went to these schools.

Quotation of the Day

LEAD: Samson Dah, 7 years old, held a placard that read, ''Let the People Speak,'' and his father, Dr. Saw Shwe Dah, spoke of the plight of his countrymen in Burma.

August 22, 1988

Headlines from August 22, 1988

Listless Mets Lose, 1-0

Big Apple: New York Nickname With a Southern Accent?

Metro Matters; She Is Outspoken And Out Running To Win Support

Mission of an AIDS Unit Is Not to Cure, but to Care

GDANSK SHIPYARD TO JOIN STRIKERS

Billboard 200

Roll With It

Hysteria

Appetite For Destruction

Tracy Chapman

He's The D.J.; I'm The Rapper

Historical Context for August 22, 1988