Could you tell the story of finding your birth certificate?
Oh god. Yeah. Wow. I'd gotten home from school.
How old were you at that time?
11. I was 11. And mom had kept in her closet like a Crown Royal bag that was full of coins. But she always put it in different places because we were always... because when I was going, you know, you had the concession stand at school. For a quarter you could get a candy bar back then, or like 10 cents you could get a Coke.
Just so people can put you in space. Where were you at the time?
In Louisiana, a little town, Start, Louisiana, where I grew up. A little farming community. It's just a caution light and a cotton gin. That's where I grew up. And so I was looking for the little bag, trying to find some quarters or something to go buy a candy bar at the store or something. And I found the bag and there was a box right next to it. I opened the box and right on top was my birth certificate.
And I didn't think much of it and I started looking at it and I saw McGraw where a line had been drawn through it and right above it written by hand in pencil was Smith, which was my stepdad's name. And then it said dad's occupation: professional baseball player. And of course, being 11 years old and growing up, you know, sort of we were like low, low middle class and you know didn't have any money, and seeing something like that, it was just so hard to register. It didn't seem real. And oddly enough, I had three baseball cards on my wall in my room. His was one of them because he was one of my favorite players.
Yeah. So, I instantly called my mom and I could tell that it hit her like a ton of bricks. She was at work and I'm like, 'Mom, what is this? My birth certificate? What does this mean?' And then she was like, 'Oh my god.' That's all she said. And she said, 'I'll be right home.' And then she came home and we went for a ride and she told me the whole story.
Her junior summer in high school, and her mom had just left her dad, my grandpa, and they were staying in a motel that had an outdoor pool, you know, like a motor court motel that my grandmother and my mom were staying at. It just so happened that the minor league team, the Jacksonville Suns, minor league team for the Mets, all the ballplayers were staying in that hotel as well. So Tug and my mom met at the pool and sort of dated over the summer. And when he left, got called up or whatever, left, she found out she was pregnant.
My mom was a dancer and she had just gotten invited to try out for Where the Action Is by Dick Clark, which was like his first show, the precursor to American Bandstand and all that stuff. So, my mom had just gotten a letter inviting her to audition for it. And she had just found out she was pregnant with me. And then I have her senior portrait that she took, that they always take at the beginning of the senior year. And she had just found out two days before the senior portrait she was pregnant with me. And every time I look at that portrait, I can see it in her eyes. I can see that her whole future had just disappeared in front of her.
And she told me the whole story and said that she hadn't talked to him since and hasn't heard from him. And I said, 'But I'd like to meet him, you know.' So she got in touch with his lawyer somehow or his agent somehow. And he was still playing at the time and they arranged somehow. Mom borrowed a car from her boss and some money from her boss. He said he would leave tickets for us and have lunch with us.
And we drove there, he met us for lunch, we talked for a little while, and he just said, 'You know, I'm not your dad. I don't think I'm your dad, but we can be friends,' kind of deal. And we went to the game. I had a Pete Rose magazine where Pete Rose was about to break the hitting record that I brought with me and he took me in the clubhouse and Pete Rose signed that. So, I got to meet Pete Rose. Got to throw the ball a little bit with some of the guys for batting practice and my mom had got me a McGraw shirt made and a Phillies hat and all that stuff. So, she had me all decked out. We met, never saw him after the game or anything. Never heard from him again. So, of course, I was obsessed, as an 11-year-old kid would be, about something like that.
Could I pause you for one second? What were the emotions that you felt at the time? Was there anger? Was there confusion? Was there admiration? What was the mixture of emotions that you felt?
