Rick Monday was 17 years old when he found himself across a dinner table from a very persistent baseball scout named Tommy Lasorda. Monday’s mother, Nelda, kept insisting that she wanted her son to get an education, and Lasorda kept ripping up the paper that included the Los Angeles Dodgers’ signing bonus and increasing it. First, he doubled the original number. Then, he wrote down an eye-popping sum that gave both mother and son pause: $20,000. It was, after all, 1963. In the end, Nelda Monday still turned down Lasorda’s offer, and Rick Monday attended Arizona State University, but before he left the dinner table, she made Lasorda a promise: Her son would turn down the other scouts after he got his education and sign with the Dodgers. After all, the Mondays were big Dodgers fans. The voices of Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett were seemingly always on Nelda Monday’s car radio as she tooled around Santa Monica. Read more http://espn.go.com/blog/los-angeles...ls-the-day-50-years-ago-that-changed-baseball
