Condition Continued: I counted ten very thin top corner creases, no bottom corner creases. No corners were folded in. There are no markings in the book. No attachments of any kind. And no one has written their name or anything else anywhere.
Turning to the dust jacket, the previous owner did unfortunately write on the front of the dust jacket, colorin in some of the blank yellow spaces inside the letters with a pen. Somebody should give him a good 'wallop.' On the brighter side (for you), it has caused me to discount the price from within the range of the other sellers to a significantly lower price. Also on the bright side, the jacket is pretty clean. There is some rubbing and small loss at the top edge of the spine, also a little scuff next to the letter 'T' in Pennant on the spine, and another just off the top edge of the front. There is a very tiny loss at the bottom edge of the spine, and there are in total a half-dozen edge tears. The jacket is NOT price-clipped. The white flaps are very clean. There is a teeny tiny crease below the tips of the top corners of each flap. I have always had the jacket in a fitted protective cover.
W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1954. Hardcover in Dust Jacket. A very rare genuine Stated First Edition. There are four others for sale ranging in price from $300.00 to $550.00. There are also quite a few unsavory sellers identifying their BOMC books as first editions. 'This novel was adapted into the 1955 musical Damn Yankees. The musicals book was written by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop; its music and lyrics were written by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. The musical starred Ray Walston as Applegate, Stephen Douglass as Joe Hardy and Gwen Verdon as Lola. The 1958 film adaptation featured Tab Hunter as Joe. Hunter was the sole actor who had not been in the stage play.'
From the books' Wikipedia profile: 'The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant is a 1954 novel by Douglass Wallop. It adapts the Faust theme of a deal with the Devil to the world of American baseball in the 1950s.
The novel's protagonist, mild-mannered, middle-aged Joe Boyd, is depicted as a lifelong fan of the hapless Washington Senators. As the novel begins, the Senators are losing ground in the American League to their longtime nemesis, the New York Yankees.
The discouraged Boyd runs into an unexpected offer from a fast-talking confidence man, who introduces himself as 'Mr. Applegate.' Applegate offers to transform Joe Boyd into Joe Hardy, a young baseball superstar, and facilitate his signing with the Senators front office so that Hardy can help salvage the Senators lost season. Boyd, suspicious, negotiates with Applegate and extracts a promise that the transformation will only be temporary and, after helping the Senators win a suitable number of games, Hardy will be able to re-transfer himself back to his Joe Boyd personality.
The transformation takes place, Hardy joins the Senators, and all begins to develop as Applegate had predicted. However, the new baseball superstar begins to realize that his deal with Applegate may not be so temporary and he may have let himself in for more than he had expected.'