BASEBALL; Around the majors

* Once the major league strike ended, Philadelphia's Pete Rose went right out and collected his 3,631st hit to break Stan Musial's National League record. The lost games may not have left any rust on Pete's bat, but they could make his quest to overtake Ty Cobb's all-time total of 4,190 that much tougher. The shortened season has an impact on other players as well. For example, Montreal rookie Tim Raines, who had 50 steals in 55 games, can forget about breaking Lou Brock's record of 118. And Yankee reliever Rich Gossage, with 17 saves in Season 1, can't realistically expect to overtake John Hiller's 38 anymore. Twenty wins are virtually beyond the reach of any starting pitcher, a .300 batting average won't be quite the achievement it normally is, and most all statistics will have a hollow ring.

* Though some observers chastised baseball for not discounting tickets to this year's watered-down All-Star Game, a record 72,026 fans showed up to see it Sunday night in Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The contest followed the usual script, the National League winning for the 10th year in a row, 5-4. Everything was pretty much back to normal the next day, too, when only 4,773 turned out to watch the Indians lose to Milwaukee in the "opener." Generally, however, attendance was encouraging in the wake of the strike, with crowds of 20,000 about the average. The feeling persists, however, that teams which fall out of the new pennant races quickly may play before more empty seats than usual.