\n<\/p>\n
Joe DePugh, the Little League teammate of Bruce Springsteen who inspired the rocker\u2019s hit song \u201cGlory Days,\u201d a rousing, bittersweet anthem to their hardscrabble childhoods in Freehold, N.J., where time passed by \u201cin the wink of a young girl\u2019s eye,\u201d died on Friday in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was 75.<\/p>\n
The cause of death, in a hospice facility, was metastatic prostate cancer, his brother Paul <\/span>said.<\/p>\n In the early 1960s, before Mr. Springsteen became the Boss, he was a clumsy baseball player whose athletic abilities were so sad that Joe, the team\u2019s star pitcher, gave him the nickname Saddie.<\/p>\n \u201cBruce lost this big game for us one year,\u201d Mr. DePugh told<\/a> The Palm Beach Post in 2011. \u201cWe stuck him out in right field all the time, where you think he\u2019s out of harm\u2019s way. But this important game, we had a bunch of guys missing, and we had to play him.\u201d<\/p>\n In the last inning, Saddie dropped an easy fly ball.<\/p>\n \u201cActually, it hit him on the head,\u201d Mr. DePugh said, \u201cand we lost the game.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n They remained friends in high school, bonding over their turbulent home lives and their distant, alcoholic fathers. After graduation, Saddie took off to play rock \u2019n\u2019 roll in bars and nightclubs. Joe, who excelled at multiple sports, tried out for the Los Angeles Dodgers but wound up playing basketball at King\u2019s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.<\/p>\n In 1973, when they had been out of touch for years, these two boyhood friends bumped into each other at the Headliner, a roadside bar in Neptune, near the Jersey Shore. Mr. Springsteen was walking in; Mr. DePugh was walking out.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were 24 years old, and he was just hitting it big in the music industry,\u201d Mr. DePugh told<\/a> the Wilkes-Barre newspaper The Times Leader in 2011. \u201cWe went back in and started talking about grade school, the nuns we had, Little League and high school.\u201d<\/p>\n Afterward, they drifted apart again: Mr. Springsteen, to worldwide fame; Mr. DePugh, to a vagabond life as a contractor, splitting his time between South Florida and Stowe, Vt.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was a rolling stone,\u201d Mr. DePugh\u2019s brother said. \u201cHe didn\u2019t really live anywhere for any length of time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Wherever he went, Mr. DePugh told stories of his friendship with Mr. Springsteen and the night they reunited at the bar. In 1984, the Boss released \u201cBorn in the U.S.A.,\u201d his seventh album. The fourth song on Side 2 was \u201cGlory Days.\u201d<\/p>\n Scott Wright, a friend of Mr. DePugh\u2019s in Vermont, heard it on the radio.<\/p>\n \u201cHe told me, \u2018Springsteen has a new album out, and there\u2019s a song on there about you,\u2019\u201d Mr. DePugh told The New York Times<\/a> in 2011. \u201c\u2018It\u2019s exactly the story you told me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. DePugh didn\u2019t believe him, so Mr. Wright called the radio station and requested the song. Half an hour later, the D.J. came on and said, \u201cThis is going out to Scotty Wright up in Stowe, Vermont,\u201d Mr. DePugh recalled<\/a> on the public radio show \u201cOnly a Game\u201d in 2011. \u201cThis is the new Springsteen song, \u2018Glory Days,\u2019 and apparently it\u2019s about a friend of Scott\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n A guitar strummed. Then Saddie sang:<\/p>\n I had a friend was a big baseball player back in high school<\/em><\/p>\n He could throw that speedball by you, make you look like a fool, boy<\/em><\/p>\n Saw him the other night at this roadside bar, I was walking in, he was walking out<\/em><\/p>\n We went back inside, sat down, had a few drinks, but all he kept talking about was Glory Days<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Mr. DePugh was floored.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew immediately it was about me,\u201d he told The Times Leader. \u201cIt described exactly what happened that night.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. DePugh was like a lot of characters in Mr. Springsteen\u2019s songs: wounded by loss and disappointments, but also resolute, and certainly never hopeless.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Joseph Francis DePugh was born on Aug. 8, 1949, in Yonkers N.Y., the eldest of five boys. His father, Joseph, was frequently absent. His mother, Joan (Campbell) DePugh, a typist and clerk for the state of New Jersey, died of cancer in 1969.<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t have much, but, like Bruce, we had enough,\u201d Paul DePugh said in an interview. \u201cWe always had a roof over our heads. But after my mother died, everything went to hell.\u201d<\/p>\n Joe became the legal guardian of his younger brothers, who were shuffled between foster homes.<\/p>\n He went on to graduate from King\u2019s College with a degree in English and worked as a substitute teacher before starting a contracting company. He made a good enough living as a contractor to shuttle back and forth between Florida and Vermont. His marriage to Nancy Saunders in 1987 ended in divorce.<\/p>\n For years, there was debate among his Freehold buddies about who the real \u201cspeedball pitcher\u201d in the song was, but Mr. DePugh always insisted it was him. In 2004, Mr. Springsteen gave Mr. DePugh and other friends in Freehold tickets to a concert at Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore he sang \u2018Glory Days,\u2019\u201d Mr. DePugh told The Times Leader, \u201cBruce yelled into the microphone, \u2018Joe D., are you out there?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The following year, their mutual friend Don Norkus got them together for lunch at an Italian restaurant in Red Bank, N.J.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cBruce pulls in and I point at him and he points at me, and that\u2019s when the hugging started,\u201d Mr. DePugh told The New York Times. They reconnected again a few years later at a restaurant in Freehold.<\/p>\n \u201cHe said, \u2018Always remember, I love you,\u2019 not like some corny Budweiser commercial, but a real sentimental thing,\u201d Mr. DePugh said. \u201cI was dumbfounded. I said, \u2018Thanks, Saddie.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Last week, after Mr. DePugh died, Saddie posted a statement<\/a> on his website.<\/p>\n \u201cJust a moment to mark the passing of Freehold native and ballplayer Joe DePugh,\u201d it said. \u201cHe was a good friend when I needed one. \u2018He could throw that speedball by you, make you look like a fool.\u2019\u2026Glory Days my friend.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n