As Thanksgiving dinners go, it was probably the most memorable. But it was memorable not for the quality of the meal or the guests. I didn’t eat dinner that Thanksgiving, and I’m not sure who the guests were. That’s because I never saw them.

Thanksgiving 1976. It was a day like most other days. I was working. I wasn’t supposed to be working, but because that was the first year of free agency I felt I should make some calls to check up on possible developments. The calls paid off because I learned that George Steinbrenner was close to signing Reggie Jackson.

Easily the No. 1 player in the first class of free agents, Jackson was Steinbrenner’s No. 1 target. Steinbrenner was in the fourth year of his ownership of the Yankees, who a month or so earlier had been swept out of the World Series by the Cincinnati Reds.

That was the year the Yankees returned to the post-season for the first time since 1964, propelled by Chris Chambliss’ dramatic ninth-inning, last-game home run against Kansas City in the American League Championship Series. It was a remarkable achievement for Steinbrenner, considering where he started, but the Reds’ sweep left him with an empty, incomplete feeling. That, he vowed, would not happen again.

The start of free agency was a personally beneficial development for Steinbrenner. It was as if free agency were created just for him. Accepting that gift, he played the game better than anyone.

The Yankees signed Don Gullett 33 days after he beat them in the World Series opener, but the best was yet to come. Steinbrenner wanted Reggie Jackson – Billy Martin would have prefered Joe Rudi — and he pursued him, in Jackson’s words, “like trying to hustle a girl in a bar.”

The critical day in the pursuit was Thanksgiving, 32 years ago this Thanksgiving. On that day Steinbrenner was visiting his son, Hank, at Culver Military Academy in Indiana, having Thanksgiving dinner with him at the school eatery known as the Shack.

That’s where I tracked Steinbrenner by telephone. He was shocked that I had found him but took the phone when he was told there was a call for him.

“We have a good shot,” the owner acknowledged when I told him what I had heard. “We feel we have a good chance to get him. We’re right in the middle of it. It’s not easy when you have Ray Kroc and Charles Bronfman in the mix, but we’ve got something to sell and that’s New York.”

Executives of other clubs vying for Jackson had pretty much conceded.

“I thought all along the Yankees were in the driver’s seat,” said Buzzie Bavasi of the San Diego Padres, whose owner, Ray Kroc, wanted Jackson as badly as Steinbrenner. “Í think it’s going to be New York. That’s my gut feeling. We asked what their proposal was. They told us. Ray said okay. He said do you want cash or a check. They turned down their own proposal. To me, it’s between Montreal and New York, and I think New York has the inside track.”

The Jackson pursuit had an interesting subplot. Reggie’s agent, Gary Walker, did not fly but instead traveled around the country in a motor home. Basically, anyone interested in signing Jackson had to travel to meet Walker, and on this Thanksgiving Walker was in Carthage, Ill.

Walker was a Mormon, and as he said, “Carthage is steeped in Mormon history.” He also noted that it was where Joseph Smith, the Mormon leader, was killed.

Carthage was also close enough to Chicago, which is where Steinbrenner and other suitors met Jackson and Walker.

“I’m coming into O’Hare,” Steinbrenner said in our telephone conversation Thanksgiving night. “I get on a little bus that goes to the Hyatt Regency. I’m the only guy on there and all of a sudden he stops and who gets on but Hank Peters.”

Peters was the general manager of the Baltimore Orioles, another suitor.  “They asked us to make our final offers,” he related that night. “They didn’t want to play one off against the others. They asked us to give them our best shot. I have reason to think the offers have gone out of sight. I think it’s gone even further than they thought it would.”

Peters, however, might have miscalculated. He thought the Yankees’ interest in Jackson was not as great as it had been previously, and he said he didn’t think Jackson had to rely on being in New York to have the television exposure he desired. “He has reason to believe he’s pretty well set now,” Peters said.

The prevailing view among all of the clubs was that Bronfman’s Montreal Expos had made the best offer.  “Reggie said he’d call me when he makes up his mind,” John McHale, the Expos’ general manager, said. “I thought he’d call this morning, but I guess there are three pretty substantial offers in front of him. I don’t know what the other people have offered. I know our offer is so substantial I don’t see how anyone is going to knock us out of it.”

McHale called the Expos’ offer a “king’s ransom,” and it was the highest offer Jackson received, more than $3 million, which in those days was a king’s ransom. But Reggie didn’t want to play in Montreal. That was the problem the Expos would have in the early years of free agency. Players didn’t want to play there, and the Expos always had to make higher offers than other teams to try to lure free agents north of the border.

“Montreal has tried awfully hard; they made some fabulous offers,” Gabe Paul, the Yankees’ general manager, said just before I reached Steinbrenner at the Shack. But he said, “I think we’re going to get him. He really wants to play in New York. Reggie said he would not accept any offer from Montreal.”

Jackson accepted the Yankees’ offer of $2.66 million for five years plus a $250,000 loan at a low 6 percent interest rate. The Yankees also paid his agent’s and lawyer’s fees.

I would like to have talked to Steinbrenner about his Thanksgiving pursuit, but he no longer does interviews; nor does he appear publicly very often. I am told he still has a good recollection of past Yankees events, but he shares them only rarely.

In lieu of Steinbrenner, I would like to have talked with Hank Steinbrenner, who was the Culver student his father had Thanksgiving dinner with between trips to Chicago to meet with Jackson. But Hank was nowhere to be found. Even the Yankees, I am told, usually have difficulty finding him or getting him to return their calls.

Hal Steinbrenner, who was in elementary school when his father signed Reggie, was not available either. The Yankees said he was doing no interviews until after the Thanksgiving weekend.

Their unavailability raises a question: If there were a Reggie Jackson available as a free agent this year, would Hank or Hal have spent Thanksgiving chasing him and trying to sign him?