Bruce Springsteen recently took to Instagram to pay tribute to an old friend and inspiration of his 1985 hit “Glory Days.”
“Just a moment to mark the passing of Freehold native and ballplayer Joe DePugh. He was a good friend when I needed one. “He could throw that speedball by you, make you look like a fool”….Glory Days my friend,” Springsteen posted on Instagram on March 30.
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DePugh died from cancer at the age of 75, according to the Asbury Park Press.
The post included lyrics about DePugh that were featured in the song from Springsteen’s chart-topping 1984 albumBorn in the U.S.A. The anthemic “Glory Days” was the fifth single released from the album and reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart.
“I had a friend was a big baseball player / Back in high school / He could throw that speedball by you / Make you look like a fool, boy / Saw him the other night at this roadside bar / I was walking in, he was walking out / We went back inside, sat down, had a few drinks / But all he kept talking about was Glory Days…,” Springsteen sings in the song.
The song accurately told the true story of what happened when the two old friends ran into each other.
“I was leaving the Headliner at about 9:30 p.m. and when I get outside, here comes Bruce,” DePugh recalled in a 2011 interview with the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader. “We were 24 years old and he was just hitting it big in the music industry. We went back in and started talking about grade school, the nuns we had, Little League and high school. The ‘glory days,’ just like the song says.”
Despite Springsteen’s stardom, it was DePugh who felt like the superstar when the two would meet up.
“We’ve only been together a couple of times since high school, but when we do see each other, I’m still the big baseball star and he’s still the same quiet, humble kid at the end of the bench,” DePugh told the Times-Leader. “We used to call him ‘Saddie’ because he hardly ever played.”
Years after those encounters, DePugh recognized he was the “big baseball player” in Springsteen’s hit. “I knew immediately it was about me,” DePugh told the Times-Leader in 2011. “It described exactly what happened that night. It’s never been a mystery; everybody who knew me knew the song is about me.”
