During the Phillies’ 7-0 victory on Tuesday, country music star Tim McGraw was in attendance at Citizens Bank Park with his wife, Faith Hill, WTXF-TV reported. It was the first World Series game played in Philadelphia since 2009.
McGraw, 55, was sporting the No. 45 jersey worn by his father, reliever Tug McGraw, with whom he had a complicated relationship.
Tim McGraw received a big ovation when he appeared on the Jumbotron screen and showed off the back of his uniform, which had his father’s name and number on it, WPVI-TV reported.
Country music star Tim McGraw is wearing his father’s Phillies jersey at tonight’s game 🙌
Tug McGraw was a key part of the Phillies’ first World Series victory in 1980, winning five games and saving 20 others during the regular season, according to Baseball-Reference.com.
“I didn’t know he was my dad,” Tim McGraw said in a 2013 interview with Larry King. “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.”
“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,” McGraw said in an interview with Esquire in 2021. “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?”
Tim McGraw met his father for the first time later in 2013 but did not see him again for another seven years, Billboard reported.
Tug McGraw died on Jan. 5, 2004, in Brentwood, Tennessee. He was 59.
Tim McGraw has plenty of hits. The Phillies could have used a few of them on Wednesday night, becoming only the second team in World Series history to be no-hit.
Before the start of the World Series, Tim McGraw tweeted, “Let’s go Phillies!” and posted a video of his father striking out Willie Wilson of the Kansas City Royals for the final out of the 1980 World Series at Veterans Stadium. That gave the Phillies their first World Series title. They would win the Series again in 2008 against the Tampa Bay Rays.