Bob Dernier
American baseball player

Robert Eugene Dernier (born January 5, 1957) is an American former professional baseball center fielder who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs in the 1980s. The fleet-afoot 1984 Gold Glove Award winner was also known as "the Deer", to fans at Chicago's Wrigley Field.
Dernier experimented as a switch hitter during part of the 1983 season with Philadelphia.
Biography
After graduating from high school in Raytown, Missouri, Dernier attended Longview Community College, where he played baseball and majored in journalism. He led the minor leagues three times in stolen bases—77 with Peninsula in 1979, 71 with Reading in 1980, and 71 for Oklahoma City in 1981.
Dernier was traded along with Gary Matthews and Porfi Altamirano from the Phillies to the Cubs for Bill Campbell and Mike Diaz on March 27, 1984. He was the leadoff hitter for the Cubs' 1984 National League East division championship team. Hall of Fame second baseman Ryne Sandberg batted second and the lead-off pair was dubbed "The Daily Double" by Cubs announcer Harry Caray. Dernier was a member of the 1983 Phillies team, which won the National League pennant but lost the World Series to the Baltimore Orioles, and the 1984 Cubs team which won the NL East but lost in the playoffs to the San Diego Padres. He homered to lead off the first inning of Game 1 in the 1984 National League Championship Series, the first postseason home run hit by a Cub since Phil Cavarretta of the 1945 World Series.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Bob Dernier” is american baseball player. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Dernier, American and baseball, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4932269. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1957, 1984, 1983 and 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bob Dernier” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.