Just Try Burnin' THIS Flag! - April 25, 1976

[82Rigger]

The day was April 25, 1976. The Cubs were playing the Dodgers in Los Angeles. Patrolling center field for the Cubs was 30-year-old Rick Monday, who was embarking upon what would be the best season of his career, with 32 home runs and 77 runs batted in. On this spring day in '76, he was on a Cubs team that was headed for a fourth place finish in the National League East. It was the fourth inning with the Dodgers batting.

The Vietnam War had ended a year before, but people didn't need a war in order to protest. What these two ding-a-lings who had just dashed onto the field of Dodger Stadium were all about nobody knew, but here they were, and where was security? They had come from the left-field corner and had just run past Cubs left fielder Jose Cardenal. One carried something under his arm but Monday couldn't distinguish what it was. Once they reached shallow left-center, they stopped and brought out the object. Monday could see; it was a U.S. flag.

He recalled that they laid it on the ground almost as if they were about to have a picnic. Then one of them dug into his pocket and brought out something shiny and metallic.

"I figured having gone to college two and two is sometimes four," Monday said. "They were dousing it with lighter fluid."

Then they lit a match. Which flared momentarily and died. By now, Monday was in full stride, running towards them.

"To this day, I don't know what I was thinking,"he said. "Except bowl them over." He was also thinking they were trying to commit a terrible act.

"What they were doing was extremely wrong as far as I was concerned," said Monday, who served six years in the Marine Reserves. He reached them about the time they got the second match lit and were about to torch the flag. "There's a picture that I think won the Pulitzer Prize and it showed me reaching down and grabbing the flag," he said.

Monday got the flag and when he reached the Dodgers' dugout handed it off to Doug Rau, a Dodgers' pitcher. That was the last Monday saw of it until a month later. The Dodgers came to Wrigley Field and Al Campanis, a Dodgers executive, presented the flag to Monday. "It's displayed very proudly in my home," he said.

Dodger coach Tommy Lasorda had also started running out to the outfield from the other direction, and fortunately for the two nuts involved, security got there before he did. Monday, in other interviews, has said that Lasorda had murder in his eyes as Monday passed him in full stride. He had no doubt that the two individuals would have presented no challenge whatsoever to the middle-aged but well-known battler.

Lasorda recalled in his book that starting softly, the crowd started singing "God Bless America", completely unprompted, until all of the tens of thousands of Dodger fans had joined together to sing it. It was one of the few unscripted and spontaneous patriotic displays in our Bicentennial, and one of the most moving at any time.

A few minutes later, the Dodgers' giant message marquis flashed out a special tribute.

"RICK MONDAY...THAT WAS A GREAT SAVE!"

Monday got a hero's welcome wherever the Cubs played the rest of that season. It was the last thing he wanted. He had simply done what he thought was the right and honorable thing to do. He had visited a veterans hospital when he played for Oakland and had seen how people's lives had been shattered fighting for what that flag represents. "It's the way I was brought up," he said. "You would have done the same thing had you been as close geographically as I was.....get the idiots stopped."

[Packo]

Geeze Steve....what a great story...

You really find some cool stuff to post. Luckily....for the two assholes on the ground and me, don't like jail, I wasn't there.

Pack

[SEATJERKER]

...
...first thought is that they never should have gotten out alive,...

...

...Remembering "Monday's" effort then is frozen upon many a memory,...

... and Thank you Steve for all you do, you find , and enlighten us with those memories that need a reminder,...

... We all would have done the same thing,...

...Wouldn't want to really piss off LaSorda, even to this day,...

...