Bruce Springsteen has honored his late friend Joe DePugh, a pitcher who inspired his hit song “Glory Days,” following a chance encounter in 1973.

Joe DePugh, who passed away at the age of 75, was childhood friends with Bruce Springsteen.

Bruce Springsteen is honoring his late classmate, Joe DePugh, a former star pitcher from New Jersey who inspired the iconic song “Glory Days.”

On Sunday, March 30, the 75-year-old rocker shared a tribute on Instagram to remember DePugh, who passed away from cancer in Florida at the age of 75, according to The Athletic.

“Just a moment to mark the passing of Freehold native and ballplayer Joe DePugh. He was a good friend when I needed one,” Springsteen wrote in the caption. “‘He could throw that speedball by you, make you look like a fool’….Glory Days my friend.”

DePugh’s skill as a teenage pitcher and a chance encounter with Springsteen years later at a Jersey Shore bar were pivotal moments that inspired the song. The reunion is reflected in the opening lyrics of Glory Days, which appeared on Springsteen’s 1984 album Born in the U.S.A. and was released as a single the following year.

In Glory Days, Bruce Springsteen sings:

“I had a friend who was a big baseball player back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool, boy
Saw him the other night at this roadside bar
I was walkin’ in, he was walkin’ out
We went back inside, sat down, had a few drinks
But all he kept talking about was glory days.”

DePugh shared with the Waterbury Record in 2012 that the memorable meeting with Springsteen happened in 1973 at a bar in Neptune, N.J. DePugh had been there with his girlfriend and kids after a basketball game, and as he was leaving, he ran into his old Little League friend, Bruce.

“We just sat and talked at the bar,” DePugh recalled. “He told me what he was doing and we talked about the old days, just like it says in the song.”

The two had first met at St. Rose of Lima elementary school in Freehold, where they played baseball together. DePugh had nicknamed Springsteen “Saddie” because of his lack of athletic skills. Though they went to different high schools and drifted apart, DePugh later graduated from King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

DePugh later worked as a contractor and moved to Stowe, Vt., where he was living in 1985 when a friend told him that Springsteen’s new song was about him.

“He says, it’s the same story that you always told us, about running into him at the bar,” DePugh recalled of his friend’s message. “Look, I am just flattered that he put me in the song. Maybe he took a little shot at me, but the song is about how you can’t live in the past and I understand that… The fact that he put me in any song is such a tribute. I mean, who gets that?”

DePugh mentioned that he had only met with Springsteen twice since the song’s release, but he praised the singer as “so freakin’ humble.”

“Whenever we’re together, it’s the same dynamic: I’m the star and he’s the guy at the end of the bench,” DePugh told the Palm Beach Post in 2011. “That’s who he has always been to me, my right fielder.”