What song did Tim McGraw write about his dad?

Tim McGraw may have grown up without knowing his father, pro baseball star Tug McGraw, but the two later formed a special bond.

The country music singer, 54, only learned at age 11, when he read it on his birth certificate, that his dad was the former New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies relief pitcher. But in a new interview with Esquire, Tim McGraw said there were never any hard feelings toward the athlete.

"People ask me, 'How could you have a relationship with your father? You were growing up in nothing. He was a millionaire baseball player. He knew you were there, and he didn’t do anything.' But when I found out Tug McGraw was my dad, it gave me something in my little town in Louisiana, something that I would have never reached for. How could I ever be angry?" he said.

The "Humble and Kind" singer opened up about his relationship with his dad, who died of brain cancer in 2004 at age 59, during a 2019 visit to TODAY.

What song did Tim McGraw write about his dad?
Tim McGraw paid tribute to his dad at the 2015 World Series, which featured Tug McGraw's old team, the New York Mets.Matt Slocum / AP

"I think a lot of people don’t realize I didn’t grow up with Tug," he said. "I didn’t know Tug was my dad. I found my birth certificate when I was 11 years old. And, like I said, we didn’t have a whole lot, and I was in my mom’s closet, I was digging through something and found my birth certificate. It said McGraw. My name was Smith as a kid because my stepdad’s name was Horace Smith."

After meeting for the first time later that same year, the father-son duo didn't see each other again until Tim McGraw was 18, and later grew close. Though Tug McGraw wasn't in his life when he was a child, Tim McGraw said simply knowing his dad was a famous athlete made him believe anything was possible when it came to his own future.

"It changed what I thought I could do with my life coming from the circumstances I came from," he said. "I felt like when I found that out, you know, he’s a professional baseball player who’s successful, to me, it made me think that blood is in my veins, so that ability is in there.

"So I found sort of that grit inside me that he must have had in order to succeed at what he did. And it changed what I thought I could make out of my life," added the singer, who shares three daughters with his wife, fellow country music star Faith Hill, 53.

In 2015, McGraw paid tribute to his dad when he threw the first pitch at Game 4 of the World Series between the New York Mets and the Kansas City Royals.

McGraw stepped up to the pitcher's mound dressed in a Mets jersey. His jersey number? 45 — the same number his dad wore when the Mets triumphed in the 1969 World Series.

In a since-deleted Instagram post, McGraw gushed of his moment on the mound, "What an honor!" and added a hashtag of his dad's famous catchphrase, #YaGottaBelieve.

Gina Vivinetto

Gina Vivinetto is a writer for TODAY.com. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where she spends her free time hiking, reading and snuggling with her "Friends" box set. She and her wife, Molly, are the proud moms of two formerly stray cats, Sophie and Pierre, and a rescue dog named Gracie. 

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always known that Tug McGraw, who was a star pitcher for the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies, was Tim McGraw’s dad.

I always assumed that the two had a great relationship, and had been in each other’s lives since Tim’s birth.

However, that was not always the case.

According to a recent profile with Esquire, Tim actually had no idea who his dad was until he was 11. He went in-depth about what this realization meant to him at that age:

“People ask me, ‘How could you have a relationship with your father? You were growing up with nothing. He was a millionaire baseball player. He knew you were there, and he didn’t do anything.

But when I found out Tug McGraw was my dad, it gave me something in my little town in Louisiana, something that I would have never reached for. How could I ever be angry?”

This wasn’t the first time the singer talked about his first knowledge of his father, as he discussed it in an interview with Larry King back in 2013:

“I didn’t know he was my dad. I was 11 years old and I was rummaging around in mom’s closet and found a birth certificate. I was growing up in Louisiana and my mom was divorced and we were barely getting by.

My (last) name was Smith. On my birth certificate, McGraw was scratched out and Smith was written in by hand.”

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He also discussed the first time he met Tug at a Phillies game on Oprah’s Master Class podcast in 2018:

“I met Tug the first time when I was 11 and it was just a quick sort of lunch and then seeing him play the game. It certainly wasn’t an acknowledgement that he was my father.”

He then recalled when he begged his mom to take him to Houston to watch his father pitch against the Astros:

“We go to the Astrodome, we walk in, and they’re warming up and he’s down on the field. He always did this thing where a player would hit balls with a Fungo bat and hit it up in the air and he would catch ’em behind his back.

So, he was doing that and I started yelling at him and then he wouldn’t look at me. So, I spent 30 minutes trying to get his attention and he wouldn’t look at me.

So, I went and sat back down. And then I never saw him again until I was 18.”

Although the relationship started off a bit rocky, he told Oprah on the podcast that his father was a true inspiration for him to pursue his dreams:

“In a lot of ways, that probably was a good driving force for me. You know, knowing that his blood was in me, you know, it inspired me. It did. Whether he knew it or not or ever thought about it, he gave me something that you could never quantify.

He gave me a dream of what I might could become because of who he was. He was my father and what he had done with his life put something in me that I probably would not have ever had, who knows– but I certainly think that that was a driving force in me to think that I could become somebody.”

The two became close once Tim was 18, and remained that way until Tug’s death of brain cancer back in 2004.

Now that the Phillies are in the World Series for the first time since 2009, Tim also recently paid tribute to his late father by posting his final out to seal the deal for the Phillies’ first ever World Series win in 1980.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tim McGraw (@thetimmcgraw)

He was also at last night’s game, reppin’ a sweet baby blue throwback Phillies jersey, with his dad’s name and number on the back.

Country music star Tim McGraw is wearing his father’s Phillies jersey at tonight’s game 🙌

His dad, Tug McGraw, won a World Series with the Phillies in 1980. pic.twitter.com/8d49mgABoQ

— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) November 2, 2022

And of course, we can’t forget arguably McGraw’s greatest hit, “Live Like You Were Dying,” which wasn’t written by McGraw, but was recorded right around the time his father passed away.

How did Tim McGraw find out who his father was?

At age 11, McGraw discovered his birth certificate while searching in his mother's closet to look for a picture for a school project. Following the discovery, he learned from her who his biological father was and she took him to meet the elder McGraw for the first time.

Who did Taylor Swift write Tim McGraw about?

The country-pop-crossover sensation wrote “Tim McGraw” in her high-school freshman math class, when she was dating a senior about to head off to college and wanted to capture everything about her that would remind him of Swift in a song. Her favorite country artist immediately came to mind.

What is the meaning of Tim McGraw's 7500 OBO song?

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