In this song, Springsteen sings about a chance encounter with an old friend who was a star baseball player in high school. This fellow is Joe DePugh, and the encounter really did happen.

Springsteen and DePugh were classmates at St. Rose of Lima School in Freehold, New Jersey and played baseball together in the Babe Ruth League (ages 13-15). They were good friends, but drifted apart as Springsteen pursued music while DePugh took a shot at sports (he tried out for the Los Angeles Dodgers).

In the summer of 1973, DePugh was walking in to a bar called the Headliner in Neptune, New Jersey while Springsteen was walking out. Bruce went back in, where he and his old friend talked about the good old days until the bar closed. When "Glory Days" was released, DePugh was living in Vermont, where word got out that he was the subject of the song.

Springsteen confirmed the story at his 30th high school reunion in 1997, but DePugh wasn't there; they finally met up again in 2005 when they met for lunch and once again relived their glory days.

This is one of Springsteen's favorites. He almost always plays it at the impromptu bar gigs he is famous for on the Jersey Shore.

Springsteen: "The first verse actually happened, the second verse mostly happened, the third verse, of course, is happening now."

Originally, this contained a fourth verse which mentioned Springsteen's father working on the Ford assembly line.
Springsteen performed the song on June 25, 1993 when he was a surprise guest on David Letterman's last show on NBC. At this time, the E Street Band was broken up and Springsteen was touring with a new set of musicians, so he performed with Letterman's house band - the World's Most Dangerous Band.

Springsteen had only recently started performing on TV - he refused to do so until after he released his Lucky Town and Human Touch albums simultaneously in 1992 and needed to promote them. On Saturday Night Live, he performed selections from these albums, but Letterman got special treatment with the crowd-pleaser "Glory Days." When Letterman relocated to CBS, Springsteen made a few more appearances on his show.

This was one of seven US Top 10 hits on Born In The U.S.A. The band first recorded it in 1982, but it was not released until the album came out.

The full version of the video starts with Springsteen working construction (in real life he never had a job outside of music). In his reverie, he recalls his days playing baseball. Amid the scenes where the E Street Band is playing the song in a bar (Maxwell's in Hoboken, New Jersey), we see him reminiscing with his glove and trophies from the glory days. At the end of the video Springsteen is on the field pitching to his son until his wife comes by in a station wagon to pick them up. It's pretty clear that Springsteen was never much of a pitcher - his form is terrible. He was a right fielder when he played.

Julianne Phillips, who was Springsteen's wife at the time, plays that role in the video, appearing in just one shot where she comes to get her boys. Patti Scialfa, who became the next Mrs. Springsteen in 1991, had joined the E Street Band in 1984 and gets a lot more face time in the clip.

On the day Springsteen released his album The Rising, he played a concert on The Today Show. This was the only song he played that was not on the new album.