Tim McGraw is reflecting on his relationship with his father, who was absent for much of his life.
The "It's Your Love" singer's father is the late professional baseball player Frank Edwin "Tug" McGraw Jr., who passed away aged 59 in 2004 after a battle with glioblastoma. However, it wasn't until the 1883 actor was around 11 years old that he learned as much, and it was a rocky road to recognizing his gratitude for his father.
Tim, speaking on The Tim Ferriss Podcast last month, recalled being around 11 years old, growing up in Start, Louisiana, a little farming community, and looking for his mom's bag of coins, when he saw a box right next to it, right on top being his birth certificate.
© Getty ImagesHis last name, McGraw, had been crossed off, and right above it in pencil was "Smith" written, his stepfather's last name. "And then it said dad's occupation, professional baseball player," he said.
"Seeing something like that, it was just so hard to register," he shared, adding that he actually had a baseball card of his dad. "I instantly called my mom and I could tell that it hit her like a ton of bricks."
He went on to share that his mom, Elizabeth Ann D'Agostino, met Tug when she was in her junior year of high school and her mom, Tim's grandmother, had just left her husband and was staying in a motel, where a junior baseball league Tug was a part of was also staying.
© Getty ImagesTim's mom told him he had not heard from him since, but eventually arranged for Tim to go see him at a baseball game, where he said Tug told him: "I don't think I'm your dad but we can be friends."
"We grew up in a very dysfunctional life, the guy who I thought was my dad growing up was an alcoholic and very abusive, to my mom and to me, and then the second stepdad was worse than the first one," Tim further recalled, noting that meeting his dad gave him "affirmation for why I didn't belong."
Tim tried to meet him a second time, at another baseball game, but Tug paid him no mind. "Then I got embarrassed after that, that I was sort of thrown away."
© Getty Images for Paramount+Tug finally came around, more or less, when Tim was 18, and met him once more to ask him to pay for his college. Once he saw how much he looked like him, he couldn't deny that he was his son.
© Kevin MazurTim ultimately reflected: "When people ask, 'How could you have anything to do with your dad? How could you not have hated him? How could you have just not turned your back on him?' My answer is always, 'He gave me something that was so precious, and that was hope. Whether he meant to — and he didn't — or knew it, he gave me a reason to think that I can get out of the situation that I was in."
"That if he can do that, then I have it in me to do something. And so for that reason alone, I couldn't hate him," he maintained. "If everything else is gone, if you got hope, you still got a chance."
