Joe DePugh, the man who inspired Bruce Springsteen’s 1985 hit “Glory Days,” has died of cancer. He was 75 years old.”Just a moment to mark the passing of Freehold native and ballplayer Joe DePugh,” Springsteen wrote on his social media on March 30. “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 and DePugh grew up together in Freehold, New Jersey, where they played in the same youth league. In 1973, they ran into one another at a bar in Jersey, where they reminisced over old times, including how Springsteen was the lesser baseball player of the two.Many years later, Springsteen would write about DePugh and this encounter in the first verse of “Glory Days”: “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.”The song, which appeared on 1984’s Born in the U.S.A., went to No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1985.In spite of Springsteen’s enormous success, DePugh told the Palm Beach Post in 2011, he only ever saw him as his childhood friend.”Whenever we’re together, it’s the same dynamic: I’m the star and he’s the guy at the end of the bench,'” he said. “That’s who he has always been to me, my right fielder.”Listen to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Glory Days’Bruce Springsteen Albums Ranked From scrappy Dylan disciple to one of the leading singer-songwriters of his generation, the Boss’ catalog includes both big and small statements of purpose.Gallery Credit: Michael Gallucci