Give the Devil his due: He’s very good at his own game. And in Damn Yankees, the all too rarely revived 1950s Faustian musical comedy that’s just opened in a brash and sassy production at Clackamas Repertory Theatre, that game is baseball. Can His Unholiness actually get the lowly Washington Senators to think they can swipe the American League pennant from the hated New York Yankees, and then, having got them to the brink of success, dash their hopes on the final day of the season?

In Damn Yankees, the Devil — played at Clackamas Rep with slick and slyly cynical relish by the deft stage veteran Leif Norby — is known as Mr. Applegate, a faux-friendly huckster who’s got a deal for you and you and you. At one point a clutch of autograph-seeking female fans, running across him near the ballpark, ask, “Are you anybody?” He replies, flippantly and more truthfully than they know: “Not a soul.”

A soul is at the center of the show’s action — specifically, the soul of one Joe Boyd, a happily decent if distracted middle-aged man who unfortunately lives and dies on the misadventures of the wavering Senators, whose games he watches religiously at home on his television, shouting with unnerving regularity at the screen and the obvious peccadilloes of the umpires, who can’t call a strike a strike or a ball a ball when it’s right in front of their noses.

His wife, Meg, puts up with Joe’s baseball insanity, a little sadly, and wonders where she stands in his affections and where the magic has gone. In fact, the magic is there, if quietly idling and largely unnoticed by both, and actors Todd Hermanson as Joe and Debbie Hunter as Meg make their strong if submerged love quietly clear.

At this point Mr. Applegate shows up, offering Joe the deal of a lifetime: He’ll make Joe young, strong and spectacularly talented and set him up with the Senators, where he’ll lead them out of mediocrity and carry them on his shoulders to beat out the Yankees and win the pennant — if only Joe will sell him his soul. Joe, who’s in the insurance racket, thinks it over and agrees, but insists on an escape clause, which Applegate reluctantly accepts.

And so, in a twinkling, Joe Boyd disappears and becomes instead 22-year-old sensation Joe Hardy, the greatest player in the history of the game — and the Senators turn from stumblebums into world-beaters, rapidly rising toward the top of the standings on the strengths of Hardy’s miraculous bat and glove. Isaac Elmore, whose background is largely musical, takes on the role with earnest panache and an appealing singing voice, painting Joe Hardy as a just-an-average-guy superstar who somehow maintains his basic decency even as he’s struck a deal with the Devil. Will he beat the Devil, win the pennant, and then go home to his armchair and his lifetime love Meg?

Damn Yankees comes out of what’s often called the Golden Age of American musical theater, and is now something of an overlooked gem, with a slyly funny book and a slew of happily catchy tunes. It debuted on Broadway in 1955, a year after the novel it’s based on, Douglass Wallop’s The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant (well worth a read, if my long-ago memory can be trusted) was published. The movie version, starring Tab Hunter and Gwen Verdon, came out in 1958.

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A lot’s changed since 1955, in musical theater and the national temperament and also in the cloistered world of baseball. In ’55 baseball still reigned as America’s sport, with football a far second, basketball not yet transformed into its current quick-paced dance, soccer just something strange that people in other countries played, and golf a presidential escape for Ike, whom we liked. The Yankees did, in fact, win the 1955 American League pennant, as was their wont, although they lost to the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series.

And with Jackie Robinson breaking the color line by joining the Dodgers in 1947, the game was beginning to look more like the nation itself, with Black players like Larry Doby, Willie Mays, Roy Campanella, Hank Aaron, and Minnie Miñoso becoming stars, and Latino players like Luis Aparicio and Roberto Clemente breaking into the lineups and eventually joining the Hall of Fame. Much later Japanese stars including Ichiro Suzuki and Shohei Ohtani transformed the game, too. Clackamas Rep’s production, with an almost all-white cast, unfortunately doesn’t reflect that momentous change.

Yet there’s plenty to enjoy here, from the songs and the slap-happy humor to some fine performances ranging from Donzelle Roane’s turn as Lola, the temptress from (literally) Hell, to Danny Bruno’s Casey Stengel-like interpretation of Senators manager Van Buren, to Clara-Liis Hillier’s cheerfully comic turn as a baseball reporter, to a complete lineup of Senators players who remarkably can sing and dance perhaps even better than they can play ball.

Lola in particular shines, as she’s meant to: Roane pulls off the neat trick of simultaneously presenting her as a merciless vamp (“Whatever Lola wants / Lola gets / and little man, / what Lola wants now / is you”) and also as a woman who, although Applegate has stolen her mortal soul, finds a rekindled sense of mercy, decency, and perhaps even love: Maybe Hell doesn’t keep its hold forever, after all.

Director Karlyn Love keeps the action flowing swiftly and humorously, taking deft care to keep things in balance and to linger over a few key moments. Lars Campbell leads a brassy offstage orchestra that sets the play’s songs beautifully, from Joe and Meg Boyd’s “Six Months Out of Every Year” and “A Man Doesn’t Know” to the sassy “Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo,” Joe Hardy and Lola’s “Two Lost Souls,” Norby’s hilarious soft-shoe swagger as Applegate on “Those Were the Good Old Days,” and the evergreen anthem “(You’ve Gotta Have) Heart.”

Shelly Mortimer’s costumes, from baseball uniforms to Joe and Meg’s down-home practicalities to Lola and Applegate’s spiffy dazzle, are spot-on. And veteran scenic designer Christopher D. Whitten, who’s designed Clackamas Rep’s sets for years, creates an open set surrounded by a proscenium frame of vivid ballpark-style advertisements for mid-’50s products, from Creamsicles to Arrow Collars to Topps Baseball Cards to Morton Salt.

Play ball — and watch out for Applegate. He’s got a few nasty tricks up his oh-so-seductive sleeve.

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Damn Yankees continues through Aug. 24 at Clackamas Repertory Theatre, performing at Clackamas Community College, 19600 Molalla Ave., Oregon City. Find ticket, schedule, and other information here.