Rick Monday on saving an American flag at Dodger Stadium: 'I get letters every week'

Rick Monday reaches to rescue an American flag as two men attempt to set it on fire during a game at Dodger Stadium on April 25, 1976. (Bettmann / Bettmann Archive) Fifty years ago, Rick Monday was minding his own business, tending to center field for the Chicago Cubs in a game at Dodger Stadium. What happened in the fourth inning of a Sunday afternoon game on April 25, 1976, and what impression those events left on him and on America, have defined his life in a way the back of a baseball card never could.

Rick Monday , in his own words: On what happened in that fourth inning : There had already been one or two pitches thrown in the bottom of the fourth inning. From center field, there is a rhythm to the game. Well, there was a sound that did not match the rhythm of the moment.

That sound was to my right, down the left-field line. Read more: Shaikin: Rick Monday saved an American flag in 1976. Why the moment resonates 50 years later I turned, and I saw there were two guys on the field.

They were running in my general direction, somewhere from the left-field foul pole. I don’t know where they get on the field from, but somewhere in that area. I saw that one of them had something under his arm.