The Cathedral

Late November 1976, a Hyatt near O'Hare Airport in Chicago. George Steinbrenner grabbed a cocktail napkin off the table and started writing numbers on it. Five years. A figure that would come to $2.96 million once the lawyers finished with it, including enough on top to buy the man across the table a Rolls-Royce. Reggie Jackson read it, took the pen, and wrote back: "I will not let you down. Reginald M. Jackson."

That napkin, not the press conference that followed at the Americana Hotel in Manhattan, was the real signing. Everything else was theater -- necessary theater, the kind Steinbrenner loved staging, but theater all the same.

A Yankees Team Looking for One More Piece

The Yankees had just finished the strangest kind of disappointing season -- the kind where almost everything went right. They'd won 97 games, taken the AL East by 10.5, and beaten Kansas City in a five-game ALCS on Chris Chambliss's ninth-inning home run, their first pennant since 1964. Then Cincinnati's Big Red Machine swept them in four straight, outscoring them 22-8, and the good feeling curdled fast. Thurman Munson, named team captain that April and fresh off an AL MVP season, hit .435 in the World Series and it didn't matter. The Reds were simply better.

Steinbrenner had already shown what he was willing to do about a gap like that. Two years earlier, he'd signed Catfish Hunter to a five-year, $3.75 million deal -- the first big free-agent contract of the modern era -- after an arbitrator freed Hunter from his contract with Oakland over a missed insurance payment. Hunter had been an accident of circumstance, a one-man free-agent class created by Charlie Finley's negligence. What came in December 1975, when arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled in favor of pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, was something else entirely: the reserve clause was dead, and an entire class of established major leaguers would hit the open market together for the first time. Reggie Jackson, fresh off a season in Baltimore in which he'd hit .277 with 27 home runs after a trade from Oakland, was the best player in it.

The Courtship

Steinbrenner didn't just sell Jackson on the Yankees. He sold him on New York, and he let the city do most of the talking. He walked Jackson down Central Park South past the Plaza, and the horse-carriage drivers -- primed, or maybe just paying attention -- called out, "See ya in the Bronx, Reggie!" Cabbies leaned on their horns. Kids ran up with pages torn from spiral notebooks, wanting an autograph from a guy who hadn't played a single game in pinstripes yet. Jackson, who never met a stage he didn't like, noticed all of it.

He had other options, and better-sounding ones on paper. Montreal Expos owner Charles Bronfman put together a package reportedly richer in total dollars than New York's. Padres owner Ray Kroc made a competitive offer too, though Jackson had little interest in joining a team that had finished 73-89. The Mets made a pitch of their own. Jackson turned all of them down for a franchise that hadn't won a World Series since 1962 and a city that never let a big personality go unnoticed -- which, as it turned out, was exactly the point.

The Signing

The terms were set in Chicago, but the show belonged to New York. At the Americana Hotel on November 29, 1976, Steinbrenner introduced Jackson as a Yankee and delivered the line that outlived the contract itself: "I'm going to build a cathedral for you." It wasn't subtle, and it wasn't meant to be. Jackson had spent three seasons in Oakland calling himself the straw that stirred the drink long before he ever said it about the Yankees, and Steinbrenner had just handed him the biggest stage in the sport to keep saying it.

Jackson had worn No. 9 in Oakland and in his one year in Baltimore. In New York, that number belonged to Graig Nettles. So Jackson took 44 instead -- the number Hank Aaron and Willie McCovey had worn, two hitters he'd looked up to since he was a kid. He wore it for the rest of his career.

What the Contract Actually Broke

The money mattered less for its size than for what it disturbed. Munson had an understanding with Steinbrenner, going back to when he signed his own extension, that he'd always be the highest-paid Yankee. Jackson's deal blew past him. Munson had just won the MVP. He'd just worn the armband as the first Yankees captain since Lou Gehrig. And now a right fielder who'd spent one season in Baltimore was making more than he was, on a team Munson had helped drag back to relevance.

Nobody consulted Billy Martin on the signing, and it showed. He'd wanted Bobby Grich or Joe Rudi, players who fit his idea of a team built on pitching, defense, and grinding at-bats -- not a slugger who talked as much as he swung. For roughly two months after the Yankees announced the deal, Martin didn't reach out to his new right fielder at all. No call, no letter, nothing. Jackson noticed that too.

None of it showed up in a box score in November 1976. It would by the following June, when Sport magazine hit newsstands quoting Jackson saying that Munson "can only stir it bad," and by that summer's nationally televised shouting match between Martin and Jackson in the Fenway Park dugout. The contract signed at the Americana Hotel didn't create the Bronx Zoo by itself. It just made sure all the ingredients were finally standing in the same room.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much did the Yankees pay Reggie Jackson to sign in 1976?

Jackson signed a five-year contract worth $2.96 million on November 29, 1976, including roughly $60,000 earmarked for a Rolls-Royce. He turned down what was reportedly a richer total offer from the Montreal Expos, along with competing bids from the San Diego Padres and the New York Mets.

Was Reggie Jackson the first Yankees free-agent signing?

No. That was Catfish Hunter, who signed a five-year, $3.75 million deal in December 1974 after an arbitrator voided his contract with Oakland over a missed payment. Jackson's signing came two years later and was the headline move of the sport's first true open market, created when the reserve clause was struck down in the Messersmith-McNally ruling of December 1975.

Why did Reggie Jackson wear No. 44 instead of No. 9?

Jackson had worn No. 9 with the Athletics and during his one season in Baltimore, but Yankees third baseman Graig Nettles already had that number. Jackson chose 44 instead, in honor of Hank Aaron and Willie McCovey, both of whom had worn it during their careers.

How did Thurman Munson and Billy Martin react to the Jackson signing?

Neither welcomed it. Munson believed he had an understanding with George Steinbrenner that he'd always be the highest-paid Yankee, and Jackson's contract broke that. Nobody consulted Martin, who reportedly preferred other free agents; he didn't reach out to Jackson for about two months after the Yankees announced the deal. The tension didn't fully surface until 1977, but it started here.

Steinbrenner got his cathedral, eventually -- two championships in the next two years, with Jackson swinging in the middle of a lineup that couldn't stop arguing with itself long enough to notice how good it was. But that was 1977 and 1978's business. In November 1976, all anyone in the Bronx had was a signed napkin, a Rolls-Royce on order, and a clubhouse that hadn't yet figured out what it had just walked into.