Defending the Flag
50 years ago this weekend, Rick Monday came up with one of baseball's greatest saves
Have you heard the one about…
…Rick Monday’s most important catch?
At first, almost nobody in Dodger Stadium understood what they were seeing 50 years ago this past Saturday.
Fourth inning. April 25, 1976. A routine Sunday game between the Cubs and Dodgers drifting along in the California sun.
Then movement in the outfield.
Two men ran onto the grass. Something was spread out. From a distance, it looked almost like a blanket.
Then smoke.
Then Rick Monday started running.
Not back on a ball in the gap. In.
Charging from center field toward a scene he had only seconds to process.
And before most in the crowd fully understood what was happening, Monday bent, grabbed an American flag two protesters had laid out and appeared ready to burn--and raced away with it.
One burst of instinct.
One unscripted decision.
One of the strangest and most unforgettable plays in baseball history.
Adding to its meaning, this came in America’s Bicentennial year, when patriotism and protest still carried raw meaning in the shadow of Vietnam and Watergate. That made what happened in center field feel bigger than baseball almost instantly.
Iconic Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully alertly captured the confusion as it unfolded.
“I’m not sure what he’s doing out there. It looks like he’s going to burn a flag…”
Then, as Monday swept in:
“And Rick Monday runs in and takes it away from him!”
You can still hear the wonder in it.
Even Scully seemed to realize this was no ordinary interruption.
Moments later, the Dodger Stadium scoreboard flashed a message that would become part of the legend:
“RICK MONDAY… YOU MADE A GREAT PLAY…”
That may have been the understatement of the decade.
Because the Cubs lost that day, 5-4 in 10 innings--despite Monday’s 3 hits, RBI and 2 runs scored--and almost nobody remembers a thing about the baseball.
But they remember that.
They remember the sprint.
They remember the flag tucked in Monday’s hands.
They remember the roar.
And they remember the photograph.
Legendary Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray called it “the most famous picture of its kind since the flag-raising at Iwo Jima.”
Not bad for a game that otherwise would have disappeared into the standings.
That’s baseball for you.
Sometimes history enters through the side door.
Sometimes it arrives in the middle of a routine early-season Sunday afternoon game.
And sometimes a moment a sport remembers a half century later is one no one could have rehearsed.
Monday, who would sign a free agent deal to join the Dodgers only months after his dash to save the flag in Los Angeles, was not some anonymous reserve thrust into a single defining moment. He was the first player selected in the first amateur draft in 1965. A 2-time All-Star. A World Series champion. The man who hit the home run that pushed the Dodgers past Montreal in the deciding game of the National League Championship Series and toward a title in 1981. And at the end of his playing career, Monday joined the Dodgers broadcast team. He’s now 42 seasons into his second career.
But ask many people what Rick Monday will be best remembered for, and they will tell you about the flag.
Not the pennant-winning home run in ‘81.
Not the decades as a beloved Dodgers voice.
The flag.
“If that’s all you’re ever remembered for, that’s not a bad thing at all,” Monday said years later.
There’s humility in that, but also perspective.
He understood something.
Some moments belong to the person who creates them.
Others belong to history.
Monday once put it even more plainly:
“If you’re going to burn the flag, don’t do it around me.”
That sounded like the Marine reservist talking.
It sounded like Rick Monday.
And now, 50 years later, the flag he rescued is headed to Cooperstown as part of America’s 250th birthday celebration, where it will be displayed this summer in the Hall of Fame.
Monday will be honored at July’s induction ceremony.
Which feels fitting.
Because Cooperstown doesn’t just preserve greatness. It preserves stories, artifacts and oddities--moments no one saw coming, or ever will.
Rick Monday was supposed to be guarding center field that afternoon.
Instead, he wound up guarding something bigger.
And 50 years later, we’re still talking about the play he made when no baseball was in sight.
While You’re Here…
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A haiku:
Monday on Sunday
He captured the Stars and Stripes
Most patriotic