June 12, 2006
Media contact: Jeff Schrade (202)224-9093

(Washington, DC) As Americans prepare to celebrate Flag Day on Wednesday, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs is asking them to reach back into their memory banks and reflect back thirty years to a Sunday baseball game, played April 25, 1976.

That was the day Rick Monday, then playing centerfield for the Chicago Cubs, snatched a flag from a father and son who were attempting to burn it at during a game between the Cubs and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

"1976 was the bicentennial year ? our nation was 200 years old and patriotism was resurging after the darkness of Watergate and the discouraging ending of the war in Vietnam, when suddenly Rick Monday saved the American flag. It was an incident which helped Americans realize once again that love of country was still there," said Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), who chairs the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee.

"Now 30 years later, Rick and his wife, Barbaralee, are writing a book about that incident and they are looking for those who were impacted by what he did. If his act of patriotism touched you, or if you were in the stadium that day, I hope that will you contact the Monday's and share with them what Rick's actions meant to you, or what that action has come to mean."

The Monday's can be contacted by e-mail at: mvpsportscorp@aol.com.

That heroic dash to save the flag was recently ranked by the Baseball Hall of Fame one of the "100 Classic Moments" in the history of the game.

"I was in the Marine Corps Reserve for six years and I had visited a veterans hospital when I played for Oakland. When you visit such places, you see first hand how lives are impacted by war and sometimes shattered when fighting for what that flag represents. When I saw what those two were attempting to do to the flag, I instinctively moved in," Monday said. "What they were attempting was wrong. I did what anyone would have done."

Monday was traded by the Cubs to the Dodgers the next year and continued out the remainder of his 19-year baseball career wearing Dodger-blue. He is now in the broadcast booth with legendary broadcaster Vin Scully, who at 78 is in his 57th season as voice of the Dodgers.

As Scully looked out onto the field that day in 1976, he at first misidentified what was going on, but summed up well the play-by-play for all radio listeners to "see":

[See the play and listen to Vin Scully's play-by-play at: Major League Baseball.]

"Wait a minute. There's an animal loose. Two of them. All right. I'm not sure what he's doing out there. It looks like he's going to burn a flag. And Rick Monday runs and takes it away from him! And so Monday? I think a guy was going to set fire to the American flag, can you imagine that? 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.

"And now the crowd is doing what they ought to do all the time: boo one of these characters, for this guy was going to try and perform the indignity of setting fire to the American flag. Well I hope they have a boat waiting for him?

"Rick Monday, a great spot? Rick will get an ovation, and properly so. So Rick Monday, his alertness and quick thinking gets a round of applause from centerfield. And Monday, getting another ovation as well he should. And now a lot of folks are standing. And now the whole ballpark?"

Shortly after Monday snatched the flag from its fiery fate, the Dodger Stadium message board flashed the following words: "Rick Monday?You Made A Great Play." After the two would-be flag burners were led of the field, the crowd began to sing "God Bless America."

Then, when he came up to to bat in the next inning, the opposing Dodger fans gave Chicago Cub Rick Monday another standing ovation.

"I was very proud for my country that day. It wasn't' about me. It was about us as a nation," Monday said.

The day after the incident, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley asked Rick to serve as Grand Marshall for the city's "Annual Salute to the American Flag" parade. The Illinois House of Representatives also unanimously passed a resolution declaring May 4 to be "Rick Monday Day."

Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn awarded Rick with an official commendation, and the Cubs held their own "Rick Monday Day" at Wrigley Field. During the ceremony, the Chicago centerfielder received the actual flag he had rescued from the protesters, thanks in part to the efforts of Los Angeles Dodgers vice president and general manager Al Campanis.

Then-U.S. President Gerald Ford wired Rick a congratulatory note and former President Richard Nixon expressed his thanks in a formal letter.

The U.S. Senate recently passed a resolution (S.R. 477) commemorating the 30th anniversary of the date that Rick Monday heroically rescued the American Flag.

Monday still has the flag that he saved that day.

The two who leapt onto the field in 1976 were then-37-year-old William Errol Thomason of Eldon, Missouri and his 11-year-old son. The father said he was attempting to draw attention to the "imprisonment" in a Missouri mental institution of his wife. The boy was not charged, but the father was fined $60 for trespassing and placed on probation for a year.

"On June 14, 1777 the Continental Congress proposed that the United States have an American flag instead of the British Union Jack. Since that time there have been 28 versions of the American flag," said Sen. Craig.

"As we approach 230 years since that day, it seems fitting that because of Rick Monday, the American flag is forever intertwined with the great national pastime of baseball. Rick's story is a great baseball story, and a great story of our flag. It should make for a great book that I look forward to reading."

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