Fifty years in the past, Rick Monday was minding his own business, tending to middle area for the Chicago Cubs in a recreation at Dodger Stadium. What occurred in the fourth inning of a Sunday afternoon recreation on April 25, 1976, and what impression those occasions left on him and on America, have outlined his life in a means the back of a baseball card never may.

Rick Monday, in his own phrases:

On what occurred in that fourth inning:

There had already been one or two pitches thrown in the backside of the fourth inning. From middle area, there’s a rhythm to the recreation. Well, there was a sound that didn’t match the rhythm of the second. That sound was to my proper, down the left-field line.

I turned, and I noticed there have been two guys on the area. They have been operating in my normal direction, someplace from the left-field foul pole. I don’t know where they get on the area from, but someplace in that space.

I noticed that one of them had one thing under his arm. I couldn’t see what it was. And they ran past José Cardenal, who was enjoying left area that day.

They went to shallow left-center. I was irritated to start with because they stopped the recreation. They shouldn’t be on the area.

Are they on the area because they’re attempting to get with someone? Because they’d an excessive amount of to drink? Do they not like a sure participant? Are they going to make some sort of a assertion? Don’t know. At that level, didn’t care. Because, now, they’re in my workplace.

I’d seen other people run onto the area over the years, for whatever cause. People run out and shake your hand and continue operating.

But I noticed these guys. When they got here to stop, one man pulled out an American flag.

They put it down on the ground. I can see the man pull out one thing real shiny. It turned out to be one of those gigantic cans of lighter fluid. They have been dousing it.

The wind blew the first match out, I imagine, or it went out on its own. The man struck the second match about the same time I bought there. In retrospect, I could have been considering about bowling them over.

But, if they don’t have the flag, they can’t burn it. So I scooped down and bought the flag.

I ran in, and I noticed the can of lighter fluid go by — probably not close, but the man threw it at me.

I introduced it in to [pitcher] Doug Rau, who got here out of the dugout. Tommy Lasorda, who was then the third-base coach, ran past me, yelling all the pieces a longshoreman would utter on a dangerous day at these two guys.

On becoming a member of the Marine Corps in 1965, three months after he was the first choose in the first-ever baseball draft:

I had an curiosity in what was going on. Rather a lot of my high college buddies — and school guys, too — have been becoming a member of.

So Dave Duncan and I joined when we have been in Eugene, Ore. It was September ‘65. We both went to MCRD (Marine Corps Recruiting Depot) San Diego. One row over from us, in a different platoon, was Bob Watson.

I very proudly served six years in the reserves.

(Monday, Duncan and Watson all earned All-Star honors as players, and each remained in the game for decades: Monday as a broadcaster, Duncan as a pitching coach, Watson as a general manager.)

On whether he would have reacted the same way that day at Dodger Stadium if he had not served in the military:

Yes. I’ve thought about it a lot. I suppose it comes down to, selections are comparatively simple to make when you imagine it’s the proper determination to start with. Without sounding corny, I am actually proud to be a citizen of this nation. It’s not good. But we are able to help make it better than what it’s.

Traveling around the world, it’s good to be home when you come back. So it was an simple determination for me.

I revered the army forward of time. I didn’t like what these guys have been attempting to do, for a lot of different causes. They have been in my workplace to start with, and with an American flag, and I was extraordinarily irritated by it.

On being remembered less for an excellent 19-year profession and more for that at some point on which he rescued the American flag:

I’m proud of the fact that it drew consideration, and still does. I get letters every week. A great quantity of the letters are from people that weren’t even born at the time, which to me is encouraging. I’m also embarrassed by the consideration that has been put upon me because I don’t know anybody that wouldn’t have performed the same factor.

Rick Monday speaks while standing close to a flag he rescued from being burnt at Dodger Stadium on Capitol Hill on June 14, 2006 in Washington. The news convention was held on Flag Day to help the proposed Flag Protection Amendment.

(Mark Wilson / Getty Images)

On not understanding why the two trespassers wished to burn the flag:

I’ve never tried to focus on those two people. I have tried to focus on the flag and what it means. A pair of years in the past, I was grand marshal of a parade in Charlotte. On the parade route, at least half a dozen instances, there can be somebody who would maintain up a shadow box with a folded American flag and say, ‘This is my father.’ ‘This is my husband.’ ‘This is my son.’

On whether or not he thought the flag rescue can be so prominently remembered 50 years later:

No. I’m proud of the fact that people suppose enough of this nation and what that flag represents to the people that have protected our rights and freedoms over the years. It still catches a glimmer of consideration for our nation. Not for me. I was just a spokesman that afternoon for hundreds and hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands, of people in this nation.

On a divided nation in the aftermath of the Vietnam War:

It was still sort of a therapeutic course of from ‘65, when I first went into the Marine Corps reserves. Fortunately, now, we honor our military.

During and right after the war, for a number of years, there were a lot of Vietnam veterans that were very scarred when they came back home, from the way that they were received, which was unconscionable. Many took a long time getting over it. Some still haven’t. And I’ve seen both sides of it, in visiting army hospitals and veterans over the years.

On one of visits he and his spouse, Barbaralee, have made to Walter Reed Army Medical Center:

There was a younger lieutenant. His spouse was proper there with him. The lieutenant said, ‘I understand you have the flag that you took away from those guys a number of years ago.’ And Barbaralee said, ‘Yes. We have it right here.’ He said, ‘Can I have a photo taken with it?’

And, in the course of, he started to bleed from one of his wounds. Almost in a panic, he requested Barbaralee, ‘Please, Mrs. Monday, please take the flag.’ And she said, ‘Lieutenant, it’s OK if you get some blood on the flag.’

And he said, ‘I will die protecting what it means, but I will not bleed on the flag.’