In 2005 - after he had his debut, off-Broadway super-success with "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" but before he won a Tony Award for "Memphis" - writer Joe DiPietro fielded an intriguing offer.

Jon Kimball of North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, Mass., hit DiPietro with a clever idea about revising "Damn Yankees." What if the main character, instead of playing for the always-struggling Washington Senators, was instead a member of the Boston Red Sox - the Yankees' eternally underachieving arch-rivals?

In the classic musical, a middle-aged fan makes a deal with the devil to become a young athlete who might be able to help his woebegone favorite team finally win the pennant.

"I was just immediately juiced," DiPietro says about Kimball's idea. "I've rewritten some old musicals in the past. You can always make them tighter and a little more modern and things, but this seemed to have a real reason to do it - a real dramatic reason - that wasn't just about updating it."

Indeed, it helped that the Red Sox "curse" had a Broadway musical aspect to it. Legend has it that Sox owner Harry Frazee, who traded Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees, used the money to invest in the musical "No, No, Nanette." That Ruth trade, of course, marked the start of a run of bad World Series luck for the Sox.

Considering that the devil and hexes play a big role in "Damn Yankees" and that the Ruth trade supposedly instigated the Red Sox jinx, DiPietro says, "I thought, this is just kismet."

He got the approval for the project from Joy Abbott, who oversees the estate of her late husband, George Abbott, co-writer of the "Damn Yankees" book with Douglass Wallop.

"I just tightened some things and tightened the story and punched up a couple things," DiPietro says, calling it "more than a tweak, but much less than a total rewrite."

This adaptation opened at North Shore in 2006 and played the Ogunquit Play house in Maine in 2012.

On Friday, DiPietro's Red Sox version of "Damn Yankees" opens at Goodspeed Opera House. Danny Goldstein, who is directing, asked DiPietro about fine-tuning the script a bit more for this production, and he agreed.

DiPietro had a personal pull to working on "Damn Yankees," too. His father had been a minor league baseball player back in the 1940s.

"I said, 'Oh, I can never imagine myself having an original idea for a baseball musical,' but I get to now rewrite the ultimate one - for him," he says.

DiPietro's father played for a then-Brooklyn Dodgers farm team. Their name? The Detroit Clowns.

"Now, in the minor leagues, there's actually some community to them and some pomp and circumstance and nicer stadiums. In those days, I think it was pretty rugged. They would do stuff like, before the game, players would have to chase a pig around the field. That's what people wanted to see," he says.

After such pre-game entertainment, DiPietro adds, guys no one had heard of would play a baseball game, hoping they'd eventually get to the majors.

His father never made it to the big leagues. Family and real life called, DiPietro says.

In his author's notes for "Damn Yankees" at Goodspeed, DiPietro wrote that his father's "love of baseball never abated, while his son's love of baseball never began. Forced to be on the Little League team my dad coached, I was pretty hapless. Much to the relief of my teammates, I was properly consigned to the bench, where I would sometimes read a book."

If baseball wasn't his passion, writing is. DiPietro made his first big splash by writing the book and lyrics for the musical "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change," which ran for 12 years off-Broadway and features music by Jimmy Roberts.

That was just the start of a string of shows - including several at Goodspeed. His first show at the Opera House was 2001's "They All Laughed" (which was known during its 2012 Broadway run starring Matthew Broderick and Kelli O'Hara as "Nice Work If You Can Get It.")

He says of Goodspeed, "They love musicals, and I wanted to write musicals. I was only a few years into it at that point. It really gave me a chance to deconstruct a couple of classic musicals and to sort of turn them into my own thing, which was a great lesson. They also have audiences who love musicals, so I was able to sit in previews and rewrite shows based on audience reaction. It was really pretty ideal ..."

He went on to adapt "Babes in Arms" for the main stage in 2002 and to develop "O. Henry's Lovers" in 2003 and "All Shook Up" in 2004 at the Goodspeed's Norma Terris Theatre. "All Shook Up" went on to Broadway.

"What (Goodspeed) does, they do as well as anyone else, any other theater around. It's just a magical place to work," he says.

Working there also put him in touch with Sue Frost, the former Goodspeed associate producer who went on to co-found Junkyard Dog Productions. They produced "Memphis," which won a number of 2010 Tonys, including one for best musical. DiPietro wrote the piece with David Bryan, who is part of the rock band Bon Jovi.

"Memphis" is scheduled to open in London's West End in October, and DiPietro was there for auditions a couple of weeks ago.

He recently dropped into Goodspeed to sit in on "Damn Yankees" rehearsals.

And now, he's in California for a couple of months, at the La Jolla Playhouse. He'll be working on his new musical with Bryan, "Chasing the Song," which is set among the songwriters working in the Brill Building in the 1960s. It reunites a lot of the "Memphis" team, including Frost and director Christopher Ashley.

So, yes, it's a very busy time for DiPietro.

"I'm very fortunate that I get produced, but to be a writer, you actually have to carve out time and sit alone with your thoughts for months and months and write poorly, write well, throw things out, take chances," he says.

"Oftentimes, I'll be home, essentially wearing sweatpants, with my dog, for two years, writing, writing, writing, and nothing new is happening. Then, suddenly, everything happens within the same six-month period, which I'm sort of in now."

IF YOU GO

What: "Damn Yankees"

Where: Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main St., East Haddam

When: April 11-June 21; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Wed., 7:30 p.m. Thurs., 8 p.m. Fri., 3 and 8 p.m. Sat., and 2 p.m. Sun., with performances at 2 p.m. on select Thursdays and at 6:30 p.m. on select Sundays

Tickets: Start at $27. All prices subject to change based on availability.

Contact: (860) 873-8668, goodspeed.org