Piling on Tracy

Most sports bloggers are forced by convention to adhere to at least the first part of the credo over at Deadspin, Sports news without access, favor, or discretion. Specifically, we can play favorites if we want, we can use discretion, but this is certainly sports news without access. That is, of course, the beauty of blogging, because sometimes a college student, a couple musicians, and two superheroes (OK, I don't have any idea what Rowdy and Bones do outside of HW) look at things differently than people close to the team see things. We also don't have editors telling us that if we slam McClatchy and Littlefield one more time, we'll never be allowed in the clubhouse again (or that Jeromy Burnitz will seriously eat our children or something vile if we make fun of him one more time). The problem is that we only get a sampling of what's said by the team to the media and when I think things like "Well, I'll be damned, besides that 18 inning game, Jim Tracy seems like he takes credit for every win and blames someone else for every loss," I don't really have much to back me up. Which is why (ahh, the point finally emerges) today's Q&A from Dejan is so great.

Q: Dejan, is Jim Tracy capable of being accountable for the team's performance?

Duncan Mitchell of Pensacola, Fla.

KOVACEVIC: If you mean in the negative sense, Duncan, I have not heard it yet.

And let me again stress something here: This is not opinion on my part. I am basing my responses on this subject solely on concrete material.

There have been numerous instances where Tracy has spoken of a decision that he made or an instruction that was issued by him or the coaching staff when explaining why something positive happened for the team or for an individual player. There has been no comment offering culpability, no regret expressed for any aspect of the Pirates' start. Not in the interview sessions I have covered, anyway.

To repeat yet again: This is fact, not a viewpoint.

If the inverse was true, that is what I would tell you.

And I am not suggesting, by the way, this trait is the primary or even the secondary cause for the Pirates' record to date. The team certainly has much greater issues than the manager saying, "I can't catch it, I can't throw it, and I can't hit it," and that, "as a manager, there are only so many things I can do."

But those comments represent an unusual stance for a manager or coach in any sport, which might explain why they made national news that night when the Associated Press considered it newsworthy enough to release a special story on it over the wire, so I can see where it is a topic of discussion.

So there we have it, from someone with access. Look up egomaniac in a dictionary, and you'll see Jim Tracy's picture. Today's Q&A focuses mostly on the Tracy's remarks this week and the "Freddy Fenomenon" as I like to call it (the phenomenon being that every single casual fan in Pittsburgh had to realize that he was a good player before Dave Littlefield could admit it).

The highlight (besides Dejan's first hand account of Tracy's egomania) was a question from Dan Wyszomierski of Houston who notices that when Jason Bay hits a particularly solid homer, his mouth twists into an "O" (truth be told, now that I read it in the Q&A, I know exactly what Dan is talking about) and wonders if we should say that Bay "showed the pitcher his O-face" when he hits a home run. Dejan dismisses this, though he does admit that Office Space is one of his favorite movies. Lucky for Dan from Houston, blogs exist, and unlike Dejan, there is no one that can tell me not to describe Bay as having showed his O-face to a pitcher. In fact, I think it's quite brilliant. Dan, if you're out there, thank you.