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Bob Dernier

American baseball player

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 27, 2026
Entity authorityQ4932269
Source-derived summary

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.

Editorial summary

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.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1957, 1984, 1983, 1979—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1957-01-05. For this dossier, Dernier, American and baseball is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american baseball player” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

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.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Bob Dernier”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Bob Dernier primary sources, Bob Dernier archive and Dernier research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Bob Dernier”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

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.