Joe Hardy

Joe Hardy is a fictional baseball player, the hero of the novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant and of the musical Damn Yankees, which is based on the novel.

Hardy is in fact the alter ego of one Joe Boyd, a middle-aged fan of the Washington Senators who has sold his soul to the devil to help his favorite team beat out the New York Yankees for the 1958 American League pennant. Hardy is very much a clone of Mickey Mantle, a handsome centerfielder with tremendous power who can run like the wind. In a few months with the team, he becomes a sensation, leading the Nats into a pennant-deciding game with the Yankees in late September.

Further Reading

• Rob Edelman: "Damn Yankees: A Washington Fan's Fantasy", in Bob Brown, ed.: Monumental Baseball: The National Pastime in the National Capital Region, The National Pastime, SABR, Number 39, 2009, pp. 95-102.
• Mark Pattison: "Joe Hardy", in Bob Brown, ed.: Monumental Baseball: The National Pastime in the National Capital Region, The National Pastime, SABR, Number 39, 2009, pp. 103-104
• Douglass Wallop: The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, Norton, New York, NY, 1954.

Related Sites

• Joe Hardy at the SABR Bio Project