There may be no better place to announce the return of Damn Yankees to Broadway than Yankee Stadium. 

 

This past Sunday, Sept. 27, the legendary baseball stadium became the setting for the big announcement: Damn Yankees is  headed back to Broadway. 

 

 

And for Temple University’s Center for Performing and Cinematic Arts (CPCA), the news carries special meaning. 

 

The beloved musical—originally written by Broadway legend George Abbott and Douglass Wallop, with music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross—is part of a remarkable legacy that connects Broadway, baseball and Temple University through one extraordinary woman: Joy Valderrama Abbott.

 

Joy Abbott, a Temple alumna and passionate supporter of the arts, bequeathed her share of the rights and future royalties from her late husband George Abbott’s musicals to Temple. The gift became the foundation for the George and Joy Abbott Center for Musical Theater and has helped support  hundreds of Temple musical theater artists. Damn Yankees is among the works included in that bequest.  

 

Now, more than seven decades after it first premiered on Broadway, the show is stepping back onto the Great White Way—and Temple has been connected to its journey the whole way.

 

 

After an award-winning run in Washington DC at the Arena Stage, the production will move to Broadway starring famed actor of stage and screen, Neil Patrick Harris as Applegate, with Emmy Award winner Julianne Hough making her Broadway musical debut as Lola and Austin Scott as Young Joe. Tony Award winner Sergio Trujillo directs and choreographs.  

 

The production will begin previews at the Marquis Theatre on March 24, 2027, with an official opening scheduled for April 20. It marks the musical's first Broadway revival in more than 30 years.  

 

This new adaptation moves the story into the early 2000s. Instead of the Washington Senators at the center of the original story, this modern Damn Yankees follows diehard baseball fan Joe Boyd and his beloved Baltimore Orioles, who can’t seem to catch a break (or anything else). 

 

When a mysterious stranger named Applegate offers Joe the opportunity to transform the fortunes of his team, Joe makes a Faustian bargain—naturally, with one very big catch. 

 

The choice of Yankee Stadium for the announcement was particularly fitting with the story's fictional baseball rivalry becoming part of a real-life meeting between America's favorite pastime and the roundly American art form of musical theater. 

 

Major League Baseball and MLB Studios are also joining the Broadway production as partners, creating a bridge between the worlds of baseball and Broadway. The production is even produced by Haley Swindal, the granddaughter of former NY Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.  

 

 

For Temple, however, the story goes deeper than baseball or Broadway. 

 

George Abbott—known throughout the theater world as “Mr. Broadway”—was one of the most influential figures in 20th-century American theater. Over a career spanning decades, he produced, directed and wrote more than 100 Broadway productions and played a role in launching the careers of performers like Carol Burnett, Liza Minnelli, Gene Kelly and Shirley MacLaine. His credits include Damn Yankees, The Pajama Game and Once Upon a Mattress.  

 

Joy Abbott shared her husband's passion for theater and devoted much of her later life to preserving and extending his legacy. 

 

A Temple alumna, Joy graduated from the university in 1952. In 2007, she made an extraordinary gift to Temple: her ownership share of the rights and future royalties from George Abbott's theatrical works, along with selected memorabilia from his career. The gift helped establish the George and Joy Abbott Center for Musical Theater and supported the growth of musical theater education at Temple.  

 

That legacy continues today through the Center for Performing and Cinematic Arts. 

 

For Temple students, faculty and alumni, the return of Damn Yankees to Broadway is more than the revival of a classic, it is another chapter in a story that Joy Abbott helped make possible. 

 

[Read more about Joy Abbott and her legacy] 

 

 

One of the most meaningful aspects of Joy Abbott's gift is that its impact is about more than preserving the past. 

 

The George and Joy Abbott Center for Musical Theater has helped create opportunities for students to learn from and work alongside accomplished theater professionals while supporting productions, scholarships and innovative musical theater programs. Temple's Abbott MFA in Musical Theater Collaboration, for example, was created to honor George Abbott's legacy of collaboration and prepare the next generation of musical theater artists. 

 

For the CPCA, it is wonderfully fitting to see a new adaptation of Damn Yankees head to Broadway at this particular moment. Joy Abbott believed that the best way to honor a theatrical legacy was not simply to preserve it, but to put it in the hands of the next generation. More than 70 years after George Abbott helped bring Damn Yankees to the stage, and more than a decade after Joy Abbott entrusted her share of that legacy to Temple, the show is getting another chance to step into the spotlight. 

 

And every Temple Owl will be cheering from the wings.