Rick Monday Recalls Saving the American Flag from Protesters at Dodger Stadium

The flag is a piece of cloth. But what does it represent? It represents the rights and freedoms that we have. And many, many people have paid the ultimate sacrifice for us to sit down and have a conversation about anything we want to have a conversation about. Live from Unocal Field at Dodger Stadium, the boys in blue are back in town after a five and one road trip and they entertain the Texas Rangers. Hi again, everybody. Rick Monday alongside Tim Never. Rick Monday has been part of the conversation in baseball for seven decades.

Now, as a broadcaster. Then, as a player. LOOK AT THIS DIVING JOB BY MONDAY. He made the catch. 19 seasons. An All-Star who hit 241 home runs. Pop, pop, pop, HOME RUN. OH, A HOME RUN FOR MONDAY. WOO. BUT THE GREATEST PLAY MONDAY EVER made didn't involve a bat or a ball. There's so many people that take time, 50 years later, that write what it meant to them at that particular moment. Many of whom were not even born at the time. Monday was the first overall pick in the first ever MLB draft in 1965. It is gone. Rick Monday. That same year, he joined the Marine Corps Reserves, where he would serve for six years.

It was important for me to be able to do that at the time. I'm citizen of a country that I really think a lot of. And it was Vietnam. 50 years ago, America was celebrating its bicentennial in an anxious time. After Vietnam. After Watergate. Well, I'm not a crook. It was April 25th, 1976, as Monday's Cubs visited the Dodgers. I'm in center field. They'd already been a pitcher two made in the bottom of the fourth inning. And I could hear the crowd react and I turn and I see these guys coming out of

the field. Two protesters knelt down on the outfield grass. I saw that one of them had something under his arm, but I could not figure out what it was. And then he spread it out and it was an American flag. I'm not sure what he's doing out there. I saw a big reflection of a huge can of lighter fluid and they doused it. I've asked myself hundreds of times, what was I thinking at that moment? And I was mad. So, I started to run at them. It looks like he's going to burn a flag and Rick Monday runs and takes it away from him. Well, they better lose him in a hurry. And Monday, when he realized what he was going to do, raced over and took the flag away from him.

It didn't take a decision. It was a feeling of what was right and what's wrong. And it doesn't take you long to decide on what to do if you think it's right. I think a guy was going to set fire to the American flag. Can you imagine that? Monday played eight more seasons. That ball is out of here AND A HOME RUN FOR RICK MONDAY and the winning a title with the Dodgers in 1981. He's called Dodger games and championships for three plus decades. This whole thing started when all of these guys in the Dodger blues were kids dreaming about this moment. But it's that one moment 50 years ago that still resonates most.

50 years after the event took place, I look at the flag and it represents a lot for us. But I think if we don't accept what it offers, it's going to diminish. It's a remembrance of what it can be.