Joe DePugh, the Little League teammate of Bruce Springsteen who impressed the rocker’s hit track “Glory Days,” a rousing, bittersweet anthem to their hardscrabble childhoods in Freehold, N.J., the place time handed by “within the wink of a younger woman’s eye,” died on Friday in West Palm Seaside, Fla. He was 75.
The reason for demise, in a hospice facility, was metastatic prostate most cancers, his brother Paul DePugh stated.
Within the early Sixties, earlier than Mr. Springsteen turned the Boss, he was a slipshod baseball participant whose athletic skills have been so unhappy that Joe, the workforce’s star pitcher, gave him the nickname Saddie.
“Bruce misplaced this huge recreation for us one yr,” Mr. DePugh advised The Palm Seaside Put up in 2011. “We caught him out in proper area on a regular basis, the place you suppose he’s out of hurt’s manner. However this vital recreation, we had a bunch of fellows lacking, and we needed to play him.”
Within the final inning, Saddie dropped a simple fly ball.
“Truly, it hit him on the top,” Mr. DePugh stated, “and we misplaced the sport.”
They remained buddies in highschool, bonding over their turbulent house lives and their distant, alcoholic fathers. After commencement, Saddie took off to play rock ’n’ roll in bars and nightclubs. Joe, who excelled at a number of sports activities, tried out for the Los Angeles Dodgers however wound up enjoying basketball at King’s Faculty in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
In 1973, once they had been out of contact for years, these two boyhood buddies ran into one another on the Headliner, a roadside bar in Neptune, close to the Jersey Shore. Mr. Springsteen was strolling in; Mr. DePugh was strolling out.
“We have been 24 years outdated, and he was simply hitting it huge within the music trade,” Mr. DePugh advised the Wilkes-Barre newspaper The Occasions Chief in 2011. “We went again in and began speaking about grade faculty, the nuns we had, Little League and highschool.”
Afterward, they drifted aside once more: Mr. Springsteen, to worldwide fame; Mr. DePugh, to a vagabond life as a contractor, splitting his time between South Florida and Stowe, Vt.
“He was a rolling stone,” Mr. DePugh’s brother stated. “He didn’t actually stay anyplace for any size of time.”
Wherever he went, Mr. DePugh advised tales of his friendship with Mr. Springsteen and the night time they reunited on the bar. In 1984, the Boss launched “Born in the usA.,” his seventh album. The fourth track on Facet 2 was “Glory Days.”
Scott Wright, a buddy of Mr. DePugh’s in Vermont, heard it on the radio.
“He advised me, ‘Springsteen has a brand new album out, and there’s a track on there about you,’” Mr. DePugh advised The New York Occasions in 2011. “‘It’s precisely the story you advised me.’”
Mr. DePugh didn’t imagine him, so Mr. Wright referred to as the radio station and requested the track. Half an hour later, the D.J. got here on and stated, “That is going out to Scotty Wright up in Stowe, Vermont,” Mr. DePugh recalled on the general public radio present “Solely a Recreation” in 2011. “That is the brand new Springsteen track, ‘Glory Days,’ and apparently it’s a couple of buddy of Scott’s.”
A guitar strummed. Then Saddie sang:
I had a buddy was an enormous baseball participant again in highschool
He might throw that speedball by you, make you appear like a idiot, boy
Noticed him the opposite night time at this roadside bar, I used to be strolling in, he was strolling out
We went again inside, sat down, had a couple of drinks, however all he saved speaking about was Glory Days
Mr. DePugh was floored.
“I knew instantly it was about me,” he advised The Occasions Chief. “It described precisely what occurred that night time.”
Mr. DePugh was like quite a lot of characters in Mr. Springsteen’s songs: wounded by loss and disappointments, but in addition resolute, and definitely by no means hopeless.
Joseph Francis DePugh was born on Aug. 8, 1949, in Yonkers, N.Y., the eldest of 5 boys. His father, Joseph, was often absent. His mom, Joan (Campbell) DePugh, a typist and clerk for the state of New Jersey, died of most cancers in 1969.
“We didn’t have a lot, however, like Bruce, we had sufficient,” Paul DePugh stated in an interview. “We all the time had a roof over our heads. However after my mom died, all the pieces went to hell.”
Joe turned the authorized guardian of his youthful brothers, who have been shuffled between foster houses.
He went on to graduate from King’s Faculty with a level in English and labored instead trainer earlier than beginning a contracting firm. He made a adequate dwelling as a contractor to shuttle forwards and backwards between Florida and Vermont.
His marriage to Nancy Saunders in 1987 resulted in divorce. Along with his brother Paul, he’s survived by two different brothers, Bob and John DePugh.
For years, there was debate amongst his Freehold buddies about who the actual “speedball pitcher” within the track was, however Mr. DePugh all the time insisted it was him. In 2004, Mr. Springsteen gave Mr. DePugh and different buddies in Freehold tickets to a live performance at Giants Stadium within the Meadowlands.
“Earlier than he sang ‘Glory Days,’” Mr. DePugh advised The Occasions Chief, “Bruce yelled into the microphone, ‘Joe D., are you on the market?’”
The next yr, their mutual buddy Don Norkus acquired them collectively for lunch at an Italian restaurant in Pink Financial institution, N.J.
“Bruce pulls in and I level at him and he factors at me, and that’s when the cuddling began,” Mr. DePugh advised The New York Occasions. They reconnected once more a couple of years later at a restaurant in Freehold.
“He stated, ‘All the time bear in mind, I like you,’ not like some corny Budweiser business, however an actual sentimental factor,” Mr. DePugh stated. “I used to be dumbfounded. I stated, ‘Thanks, Saddie.’”
Final week, after Mr. DePugh died, Saddie posted a assertion on his web site.
“Only a second to mark the passing of Freehold native and ballplayer Joe DePugh,” it stated. “He was buddy once I wanted one. ‘He might throw that speedball by you, make you appear like a idiot.’…Glory Days my buddy.”
