I almost left “One More Game” off the album. After writing it, reworking it, and listening to it more times than I could count, I was still hearing things I wanted to fix. A transition that didn’t quite settle. A phrase that felt awkward to sing. I knew what the song meant to me, but I wasn’t sure I’d gotten it where it needed to be.

Then one morning, driving to work, I listened through the album playlist again. When the song reached the bridge, I started tearing up. I knew the words. I knew what was coming. I’d helped write the damn thing, and it still got me. After all the time I’d spent picking it apart, that was what finally convinced me to keep it.

The story began in August 2025, a few weeks before my daughter, Addy, started her senior year of high school. Jon Ives and I were getting ready for our annual songwriting retreat, and I was having a hard time understanding how a baby I could remember holding had somehow reached this point already. I’d been there for the years in between. Still, looking back at them, they seemed impossibly short.

I kept thinking about practices, games, and the ordinary routines that had filled those years. If I could go back, I wouldn’t need to pick a championship or some perfect afternoon. I’d take the whole thing again, including the days when nothing happened worth remembering. Those are the days you assume you have plenty of while you’re living them.

I took some of that time for granted. It’s uncomfortable to say, because I loved being her dad through every bit of it. But loving something doesn’t always keep you from assuming it will be there next week. There’s another practice on the calendar, another season coming, another year before you have to think about the last one. Then your daughter is about to start her senior year, and you realize how often you counted on “another.”

At the same time, I was going through the early baseball years with Parker and Myles. Watching their sister grow up had changed the way I looked at those years. I wanted to coach, work with them, and play catch between practices. I wanted to be part of the things they were learning while they still wanted me there to help.

There’s a particular kind of pride in watching your kid do something you’ve worked on together. Everybody at the field sees the pitch or the hit. You remember the repetitions before it, the adjustments, and the times it didn’t work. Parker has given me plenty of those moments on the mound. Myles can put a charge into a ball and then fly down the baseline. I love watching them succeed, but I also love knowing how much of the work we got to share.

Sometimes, while one of them is playing, I can almost picture a future version of myself looking at a photograph of that moment, wishing I could step back into it. It’s a strange way to watch a baseball game, enjoying what’s happening while already knowing you’ll miss it. I want them to grow up. I want to see who they become. I just wish that didn’t require this part to go so quickly.

The first spark for the song came from a Facebook post where I’d used the phrase “flashing the leather.” An old friend commented that it sounded like a song, and the suggestion stayed with me. With Addy’s senior year approaching and the boys out on the field, I had plenty I wanted to say. About a week before the retreat, I started putting it on paper.

What I brought to Jon was rough. I had the idea and some words, but the rhythm wasn’t working, and I couldn’t find the sound that would carry it. Jon understood what I was trying to do almost immediately. We’ve been friends and made music together for years, and there’s a lot I don’t have to explain to him. He helped shape the lyrics and find their movement, and together we developed the song.

We had a version in 2025 that carried the emotion, but it took too long to get where it was going. When we returned to it at the 2026 retreat, we worked on the tempo and feel. I wanted people to reach the heart of the story without feeling like they were waiting for it. Even after those changes, I still had doubts about putting it on the record. Then that morning drive brought me to these lines:

At his last game, beneath those lights
He turned and found me one more time
Just one look through that chain-link frame
Like he knew I’d miss this game

That game hasn’t happened. The bridge is a future I can imagine, especially with Parker: a look back toward me that says he understands what those years have meant. In my preferred version, he follows it with a home run in his last at-bat. I’m his dad. Of course I’ve given the scene a good ending.

But it was the look through the fence that got me in the car. I could picture a moment when all the throwing, coaching, driving, and showing up would be behind us, and neither of us would need to explain what we were losing.

When I started sharing the song with baseball videos, parents began telling me about their own kids. Some were still in the early years. Others had already watched the last game. Then people asked for a softball version for their daughters, so I changed the lyrics to tell that story, too. There was something fitting about that, considering how much of the song had begun with Addy.

A few responses brought meanings I hadn’t considered. One mother told me her son’s last game had come before his unexpected death. Another person described a father who had been at every game but died only weeks before his child’s final one. I’d written about children growing up and a chapter ending. These families were hearing the words through a loss I hadn’t imagined when I wrote them. I don’t pretend to understand what that feels like. I know those messages changed how I hear the song.

“One More Game” began with me looking backward at my daughter’s childhood and forward at my sons’. Other people have since brought their own families into it. That’s a privilege, especially for a song I nearly decided wasn’t good enough to share.

I still hear the things I might change in the recording. But I also hear why I wrote it, and I’m glad I didn’t let a few imperfect transitions talk me out of that.

The bridge looks ahead to a last game. The final line brings me back to the ones I still get to attend:

I’m just a dad in the stands tonight
Thankful for one more game

I know there will come a time when I’d give anything to go back. Right now, I still get to be there.