Tim McGraw opened up recently to speak candidly about the relationship he shares with his father Tug McGraw. The ‘Humble and Kind’ country star learned at the age of 11 that his father was pro-baseball player Tug McGraw but later the two would form a close bond.
“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?” McGraw, 56, said.
“It changed what I thought I could do with my life coming from the circumstances I came from,” the singer, 56, said about his father, who passed away in 2004 at the age of 59. “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.”
Tug McGraw would sadly pass away in 2004 from brain cancer. Later in 2015, Tim would honor his father by throwing the opening pitch for the Game 4 of the 2015 World Series.
“What an honor!” the younger McGraw wrote in a caption on Instagram, adding a famous rallying cry coined by his father as a hashtag, “#YaGottaBelieve.”
Sources
https://www.today.com/parents/tim-mcgraw-explains-couldnt-angry-dad-rcna1776
https://www.today.com/popculture/tim-mcgraw-s-new-book-grit-grace-details-family-fitness-t166395
https://instagram.com/explore/tags/yagottabelieve/
