Post-Gazette: Inside the McLouth breakout

Warning! Zoonosis outbreak expected!

Nyjer Morgan, a September call-up, quickly captivated Tracy by making highlight-reel catches in center. Tracy not only benched McLouth but also wondered publicly how much better the Pirates might have been all season if Morgan had been promoted sooner.

McLouth, never one to complain publicly, did seek counsel back home. “It wasn’t easy for him, and we talked about it,” Rick McLouth said. “We were all pulling for Nyjer, and we still do. But for Nate to go right back to the bench there just didn’t seem fair. It made him wonder what he had to do.”

The key, as it played out, was turned by owner Bob Nutting in firing the Pirates’ entire management team, Tracy included, by year’s end.

New general manager Neal Huntington, as part of an exhaustive evaluation of all players over the winter, assigned a video assistant to splice together footage of every defensive play McLouth and Morgan made in 2007. And not just fly balls.

The determination, one that might have surprised more observers than Tracy a few months ago, was that McLouth was, in the words of one team official, “just as good, maybe better.”