Joe Depugh, who inspired Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days”, dies at 75

Thanks to Bruce Springsteen, Joe Depug’s glory days have never really passed him. Depugh, who helped to inspire “Glory Days” -‘Ade of Springsteen, but sweet and sour to the youth memories on his mega album from 1984 “Born in the USA”-he died of cancer in Florida this week at 75.

“Just a moment to mark the disappearance of the native and the baseball player Joe Depugh,” Springsteen wrote in a declaration published on Instagram on Sunday. “” It could launch that access to you, make you look a fool “… days of my friend my friend.”

Depugh and Springsteen grew up in Freehold, NJ, and played youth baseball together. The two came across 1973 outside a bar called Headliner in Neptune City, NJ Springsteen was entering and Depugh was, you guessed, leaving.

“I go by car in the parking lot and Bruce arrives here. And I didn’t see him since we graduated,” Depugh said in a video recorded for an exhibition in the freehold on the history of the song. “It was nice to see it again, and therefore we talked, and we are out in the parking lot for half an hour and said” let’s go inside “, so we went back inside and we drank and then another drink, and suddenly the boy is flashing the lights, it was almost the morning.”

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

“I knew it immediately,” Depugh said in the video on the first time he listened to the song. “It’s an incredible compliment.”

For years, the true identity of the pitcher transformed into a barro partner remained unknown to the public. The former Piccolo Leaguers had theories on who belonged to the arm behind the Speedball – there was the former player who came across Springsteen in a hot table and the local pitcher who reached minors, among others.

“There were several candidates for this, people who thought they were the” Glory Days “pitcher,” said Kevin Coyne, writer and historian owned. “Joe Depugh was a kind of dark horse.”

In 2011, Coyne contributed to organizing a 60th meeting for Little League, one of the oldest small alloys in the country. Springsteen did not participate, but other classmates did it, one of which identified the pitcher as Depugh. The confirmation had come from Springsteen himself.

“I said: ‘Well, Bruce, it’s true or isn’t it?’ Don Norkus, a friend of Depugh who had previously met Springsteen. “And he said,” Yes, it’s true. “”

Later that year, Coyne He wrote an article on Depugh For the New York Times, publicly establish its link with “Glory Days”. It was a distinction that Depugh wore slightly.

“He was a fascinating, fascinating, kind, modest and adorable human being,” said Coyne, who has known Depugh over the years since he wrote the article. “It was not a bit of suffocation, Sai, ex-athlete who spoke everything about his past days. He was just an adorable and modest boy.”

And he could really play ball. The transcription of ownership, a local newspaper, wrote of an extraordinary release of Babe Ruth League from Depugh on May 14, 1964, when he hit 11 in a losing effort. The newspaper listed Springsteen in that same list, but at the time it was Depugh to enjoy the rock star status.

“Baseball was the world and if you were good, you were a god,” said Coyne on the era of Depugh and Springsteen.

The longtime friend Rich Kane recalled his first memory of Depugh in a local home derby.

“We were older than Joe, but this little son of a gun beat us all and never heard the end,” said Kane. “He was the youngest and youngest boy in the area and won him for all these adults. It was my introduction to Joe Depugh. He was just a good boy.”

And while some consider the melancholy of the message of “Glory Days”, Depugh was not one of these.

“There is nothing in that song that annoyed him,” Coyne said. “There was nothing about it, because he was not that person. He was not a person who lived in those days. He had had those days, he had thrived in them and had loved them, and then he had a good life.”

At the end of high school, Depugh tried for the Los Angeles Dodgers before going to play basketball and getting to Wilkes-Barre’s King’s College, Pennsylvania.

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

“He said to me,” I always remember that I love you, “Depugh said in the video on one of these meeting.” He kissed me on both cheeks, and then he was out of the door. “

(Photo courtesy of Don Norkus)