Minor League Spotlight: Wally Backman Is at It Once Again

Minor League Spotlight is the MLB FanHouse's look into baseball's minor leagues. But you probably figured that out already.

The story of Wally Backman may have slipped out of everyone's collective consciousness, so let me give you a brief refresher. The Arizona Diamondbacks hired him to manage their club in November of 2004. Shortly thereafter, reports surfaced that he been arrested a few times (DUI, a domestic dispute) and he had some financial problems in his background to boot. A few days later, the Diamondbacks canned him.

Well, Backman is back managing again ... in the independent South Coast League.

The former minor league manager of the year is now running the South Georgia Peanuts, a charter member of the fledgling South Coast League. Instead of flying around the country in first class, he's enduring long bus rides between nondescript cities in Georgia, South Carolina and Florida. The $58 million payroll he briefly had at his disposal in Arizona is now a $75,000 salary cap, divvied up among 23 players, many of them with hard-luck stories similar to his own.

"Honestly, I didn't want to start here,'' Backman said with his trademark bluntness. But, he added, "If I'm here, I'm willing to do whatever. It doesn't matter. I just want to prove to an organization what I'm all about. Right now, I'm just waiting for the opportunity.''

America is the land of second chances, so I wish Backman luck in his presumable quest to make it back to the majors. He's proven he can coach. It's certainly going to be a long journey, though.