 After the Yankees'loss to the Reds, owner George Steinbrenner committed to sign marquee free agent Reggie Jackson to help win a championship. The Yankees, Red Sox, and Baltimore Orioles would keep leap frogging each other the entire year during the division race. The Yankees would win the division for the second year in a row, while the Orioles and Red Sox finished tied for second, 2 1 ⁄ 2 games behind the Yankees. Jackson's entry onto the Yankees initially had caused a lot of friction on them. In the middle game of what would prove to be a three-game series sweep by the Red Sox at Fenway Park, Yankees manager Billy Martin pulled Reggie Jackson off the field in mid-inning for failing to hustle on a ball hit to the outfield. The extremely angry and highly animated Martin had to be restrained by coaches Yogi Berra and Elston Howard from getting into a fistfight with Jackson in the dugout during the nationally-televised Saturday afternoon game. Eventually, emotions calmed down for the season and the Yankees came together to recapture the pennant and defeat the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1977 World Series, their first since 1962.
