CHICAGO -- September is a month where rosters expand across baseball, and with that expansion comes the potential for rookies to get their first taste of the big leagues. Most of those rookies play a minor role when they first come up, although some go on to play a bigger role and become fixtures on the active roster in future years.
The Pirates have plenty of guys who made their debuts in September, including their manager, Clint Hurdle, who made his pro debut in 1977 as a September callup with the Kansas City Royals. This weekend I talked with Hurdle, Jared Hughes, and recent callup Keon Broxton about the feeling they had when they first arrived in the majors (which is now for Broxton), and whether there was a specific point when they started feeling like they belonged in the majors (.