On this date in 1967, The Forum’s Editorial praised Fargo native Roger Maris for his impressive comeback season with the St. Louis Cardinals, noting his key role in their World Series run and urging fans to commend his achievements regardless of past rivalries.
Here is the complete story as it appeared in the paper that day:
Roger Maris Deserves a Pat For Comeback as a Cardinal
When the big event of organized baseball starts today with the noticeable absence of the Minnesota Twins, a great many fans from this area will be cheering for the National League winners, the St. Louis Cardinals, rather than the Boston Red Sox of the American League. The Sox beat the Twins out of the World Series by taking the last two games of the regular season Saturday and Sunday.
Cheering for the Cards is more than a matter of geography. One of the reasons that the Cards are in the series is the resurgence of Roger Maris, the Minnesota-born and Fargo-raised outfielder who has played in previous World Series as a New York Yankee.
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In his last series encounter, he played against the Cards. That was in 1964. The Yankees lost four straight and have been going downhill since.
They traded off Roger at the start of this year, and Roger now finds himself on the pennant winner in the other league.
As far as Roger is concerned, it is probably a good thing that Boston is in the series instead of the Minnesota Twins, because Roger seemed to stir the antipathy of a good many fans in Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington whenever the Yanks played the Twins.
We expect that the same fans would give him the same rude welcome as they used to do when he came to town with the Yankees, if he had shown up in a Cardinal uniform and slapped a couple or more critical base hits in the world championship games.
Whether Roger will be goat or hero, or just one of the contributors to the winning or losing cause we don’t know at this stage of the game, but this former Fargoan should be commended for the brilliant comeback he has made this year.
There are a lot of people rooting for him in the games against Boston. He should know that there would have been a lot of people rooting for him even if he had been playing against the Twins.
Kate Almquist is the social media manager for InForum. After working as an intern, she joined The Forum full time starting in January 2022. Readers can reach her at kalmquist@forumcomm.com.