Book Became ‘Damn Yankees’ Musical, Movie : Satiric Writer Douglass Wallop, 65, Dies

Douglass Wallop, the author of “The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant,” the novel on which the musical and movie version of “Damn Yankees” were based, is dead at age 65.

Wallop, who had lived here since 1963, died Tuesday at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington.

“The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant” took just three months to write and established the satiric tone Wallop followed through most of his next 12 novels. The book was his biggest success.

Wallop’s story of a fan who sells his soul to the devil so the Washington Senators can win the pennant was published in 1954 and made into the musical version of “Damn Yankees” in 1955. A film adaptation followed.

Wallop was born in Washington and received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland in 1942. During World War II, he worked for United Press in Washington. While working for the Associated Press in New York in 1950, Wallop began his first novel, “Night Light,” which was published in 1953.

After Wallop moved to Oxford from Arlington, Va., much of what he wrote was set on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. His latest book, “The Other Side of the River,” unwinds around a murder committed on the waterfront estate of a retired college professor. The novel was published last year.