Lack of Backman check bites D-Backs in backside

Arizona manager, Take Two.

Now Wally Backman is free to join would-be big-time college football coaches Mike Price and George O'Leary for happy hour. They can tidy up their resumés, commiserate a little, maybe tell a few stories from the past.

Just keep your voices down, fellas.

Wally Backman neglected to tell the Diamondbacks some important things in his interview. (AP)

This just in from personnel: Job interviews are tricky things. Really. Both Backman and, embarrassingly for them, the Arizona Diamondbacks were reminded of that again just this week. As news anchor Tom Brokaw might say of their current predicament, the Diamondbacks don't just have egg on their faces today -- they have the entire omelet dripping down their pinstriped sleeves.

How could an organization hire a leader -- for one of only 30 like jobs in the country -- and have no idea that his rap sheet was like something out of Law & Order?

Doesn't anyone besides insurance companies do background checks anymore (and we all know the only reason they do is so they can jack up our rates to near criminal proportions every time we get pulled over for having a headlight out)?

And how could Backman possibly think that he could keep two arrests (one for a domestic dispute, one for a drunken-driving charge) and a bankruptcy filing hidden away in the back corner of his closet?

Listen. The Morality Police today are out on every street corner. If nothing else, that's what we learned from this week's elections. Moral values matter. Folks don't want any part of liars, cheats and scoundrels, whether it's for city manager or for manager of the local baseball team.

The witch hunts are on. That's the way it is. So if you give them something to sink their teeth into, shame on you.

Backman, who apparently has lived as he once played -- with the pedal to the metal, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead -- gave the sharks something to sink their teeth into. What he should have done is given the Diamondbacks full disclosure and taken his chances.

It was only after the fact that he said, "They probably should have asked me about it, and I probably should have brought it up."

How's that for an epitaph?