Former Milwaukee Brewers teammates Rob Deer and Dale Sveum are together again, though this time it will be a little farther south with the Chicago Cubs.
According to Bruce Levine of ESPNChicago.com, Deer will join Sveum's staff as the assistant hitting coach.
Sveum and Deer were teammates in Milwaukee from 1986-90, sharing an historic moment together Easter Sunday 1987. The Brewers had an 11-game winning streak to start the season and trailed Texas, 4-1, in the ninth inning before Deer tied the game with a three-run home run and Sveum won it with a two-run blast to extend the streak to 12 games. Twenty-five years later, many Brewers fans regard it as the most memorable game in team history.
In five seasons with the Brewers, Deer hit .229 with 137 home runs and 385 RBI. Never much of a contact hitter, Deer had a lifetime batting average of .220, but he slugged 230 home runs in his 11-year career.
It has been a growing trend in baseball to hire a second hitting coach on the major league staff. The Cubs fired hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo last June and replaced him with James Rowson on an interim basis. Rowson had the interim tag removed last month and will be Chicago's primary hitting coach in 2013.
Another former Brewer, Craig Counsell, will not be joining a big league staff, as FOX Sports' Ken Rosenthal reported that the recently retired Milwaukee infielder has withdrawn his name from consideration to be Boston's hitting coach and will remain in the Brewers' front office.
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