A good situation with a pocket pair is having someone raise with a high pocket preflop and then that person with the high pocket gets stop gapped by a bunch of calls with no raises. You get into a 5 or 6 handed situation where the high pocket is given no opportunity to further isolate with more raises before the flop.

The minute an option opens up for further raises preflop by a person you suspect as strong, then you need to run for the hills with an implied odds type hand if you're caught in the middle. Granted 99 is a borderline callable hand for it's ability to hold up unimproved as well. That's what makes it a tough call for our hero here. The deciding factor has to be position and percieved opposing strength. I think clearly in this case those two items scream fold IMHO. I respect a call though. It's not entirely horrible.