Damn Yankees at bat on Broadway again.

SAN Diego - Broadway choreographer Rob Marshall, whose reworking of the Bob Fosse classic, Damn Yankees, is scheduled to open at the Marriott Marquis Theatre in New York City on March 3, didn't set out to have a career in dance. in fact, Marshall was seventeen before he took his first lesson, and older still before he began ballet training.

Nevertheless, the gifted dynamo managed to dance his way through four Broadway shows during his brief career as a performer (doubling as dance captain every time). And by the time he was twenty-seven, he was creating dances of his own. Marshall's choreography for Kiss of the Spider Woman earned him a Tony nomination in 1993.

Now Marshall is Broadway-bound again, after collaborating successfully with Jack O'Brien, director of San Diego's Old Globe Theatre, on an inventive revival of Yankees. The musical (with changes blessed by its 106-year-old original director, George Abbott) was a smash success with audiences when it debuted in San Diego in October 1993.

"Jack O'Brien made a lot of revisions to the book, which really helped to bring it up-to-date and make it stronger," says Marshall. "Starting with the first dance, a blooper ballet for the team, more of the story is told through dance-and the dancers are great. We have Scott Wise and several Fosse dancers."

O'Brien shares Marshall's enthusiasm for the new numbers and the revamped routines. "The great thing is that Rob is not intimidated by the ghost of Fosse," O'Brien says, "and he comes to the piece from the point of characterization, not just pure dance.

"The blooper ballet really puts you in touch with the ineptitude of the team, and advances the plot. Rob's dances are vibrant and extremely witty. He has an affection for Fosse, but you don't look at the stage and long for [him]."

Marshall admits, "I grew up in baseball, but I watched millions of bloopers to get the style for this ballet. In every number I try to come up with the concept. The steps are the last thing. It's more important to tell the story through dance-to add forward motion to the show."

Marshall has expanded Fosse's fabulous mambo duet into a trio, and has given new meaning to "Two Lost Souls" by making it a quirky twosome for the devil Victor Garber) and Lola (played by Tony Award-winner Bebe Neuwirth, fresh from the London production of Spider Woman).

"The dancing is totally redone-more sophisticated, very athletic, and much more physical than the original," says Marshall. "Today's audiences just expect more [physicality]."

This version of the beloved baseball musical was slated to go into rehearsal in New York City in January, where it will join Marshall's revival of She Loves Me.

Although this was Marshall's first project to hit Broadway by way of San Diego, it will not be the first time a locally produced show ends up on the Great White Way. San Diego has been the launching pad for a few Broadway and off-Broadway hits in the past few years, most notably La Jolla Playhouse's productions of Tommy and Big River.

Can it happen again with Damn Yankees? Marshall is betting it will.