The last Mets-Astros game ever of a National League nature in late August. It was on Channel 11, which meant it wasn't on my Cablevision-fueled television. For a couple of reasons, I decided to grab my pocket radio and drive it to my hometown of Long Beach (which is six miles from where I live but where I haven't been in several years) and spent the afternoon on a middle-aged sentimental journey of sorts, walking and listening, walking and listening. When the Astros tied it in the top of the ninth, I was guessing we were due for 16 or 24 innings, classic Mets-Astros stuff delivered as farce. I was ambling close to the elementary school playground where I sucked at stickball when Ike Davis ended it with one swing in the bottom of the ninth (nobody ever ends it with two swings, but you know what I mean). I was about a half-block from the scene of my lack of youthful triumphs. Kept walking, took a look around, saw construction had closed the playground off for summer, read something into it, turned around and picked up some mushroom barley soup to go at a deli I used to patronize. Next to the no-hitter and Dickey winning his 20th, it was my magic moment of 2012.