Joe DePugh, who inspired Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Glory Days,’ dies at 75

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Thanks to Bruce Springsteen, Joe DePugh’s glory days never really passed him by. DePugh, who helped inspire “Glory Days” — Springsteen’s rollicking, yet bittersweet ode to youthful memories on his mega-selling 1984 album “Born in the U.S.A.” — died of cancer in Florida this week at 75.

“Just a moment to mark the passing of Freehold native and ballplayer Joe DePugh,” Springsteen wrote in a statement posted to Instagram on Sunday. “‘He could throw that speedball by you, make you look like a fool’ …. Glory Days my friend.”

DePugh and Springsteen grew up in Freehold, N.J., and played youth baseball together. The two ran into each other in 1973 outside a bar called the Headliner in Neptune City, N.J. Springsteen was walking in and DePugh was, you guessed it, walking out.

“There I am going to the car in the parking lot and here comes Bruce. And I hadn’t seen him since we graduated,” DePugh said in a video recorded for an exhibit in Freehold about the history of the song. “It was great to see him again, and so we got talking, and we’re out in the parking lot for a half hour and he said ‘Let’s go in,’ so we went back in and had a drink and then another drink, and all of a sudden the guy’s flashing the lights, it was 1 in the morning almost.”

More than a decade later, “Glory Days” hit the airwaves.

“I knew right away,” DePugh said in the video about the first time he heard the song. “It’s an incredible compliment.”

For years, the true identity of the pitcher turned barroom companion remained unknown to the public. Former Freehold Little Leaguers had theories about who the arm behind the speedball belonged to — there was the former player who ran into Springsteen in a diner and the local pitcher who made it to the minors, among others.

“There were several candidates for it, people who thought they were the ‘Glory Days’ pitcher,” said Kevin Coyne, a writer and Freehold historian. “Joe DePugh was sort of a dark horse.”

In 2011, Coyne helped organize a 60th reunion for Freehold Little League, one of the older Little Leagues in the country. Springsteen did not attend, but other classmates did, one of whom identified the pitcher as DePugh. The confirmation had come from Springsteen himself.

“I said, ‘Well, Bruce, is it true or is it not true?’” said Don Norkus, a friend of DePugh’s who had previously run into Springsteen. “And he said, ‘Yeah, it’s true.’”

Later that year, Coyne wrote an article about DePugh for The New York Times, making his connection with “Glory Days” publicly known. It was a distinction DePugh wore lightly.

“He was a charming, charming, gracious, modest, lovely human being,” said Coyne, who got to know DePugh in the years since he wrote the article. “He was not some blowhard, you know, ex-athlete who talked all about his past days. He was just a lovely, modest guy.”

And he could really play ball. The Freehold Transcript, a local paper, wrote about a standout Babe Ruth League outing from DePugh on May 14, 1964, when he struck out 11 in a losing effort. The newspaper listed Springsteen on that same roster, but at the time, it was DePugh who enjoyed rock star status.

“Baseball was the world, and if you were good at it, you were a god,” Coyne said about DePugh’s and Springsteen’s era.

Longtime friend Rich Kane recalled his first memory of DePugh at a local home run derby.

“We were older than Joe, but this little son of a gun beat us all and never let us hear the end of it,” Kane said. “He was the smallest, youngest guy in the area, and he won it over all of these adults. That was my introduction to Joe DePugh. He was just a good guy.”

And while some consider the message of “Glory Days” to be melancholy, DePugh was not one of them.

“There’s nothing about that song that bothered him,” Coyne said. “There was nothing about it, because he was not that person. He was not a person who was living in those days. He had had those days, he had thrived in them and he had loved them, and then he had a nice life.”

At the end of high school, DePugh tried out for the Los Angeles Dodgers before going on to play basketball and earning a degree at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

DePugh lost both his parents at a young age and became the legal guardian for two of his brothers. After college, he worked as a substitute teacher before becoming a contractor. He later moved from New Jersey, splitting his time between Vermont and Florida. He continued to make regular stops in Freehold to see old friends, including, on occasion, Springsteen.

“He said to me, ‘Always remember I love you,’” DePugh said in the video about one such reunion. “He kissed me on both cheeks, and then he was out the door.”

(Photo courtesy of Don Norkus)

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