Wally Backman jersey?

[godwulf]

I happened to be watching the dvd of Playing for Peanuts, a week or so ago. If you haven't seen or heard of it, it was a sort of "reality" show focused on an independent league team, the South Georgia Peanuts, in 2007, and Wally Backman was the skipper. At about the same time as I was watching the show, I noticed that a Seller called "sportsmerch" had listed what is supposed to be Backman's jersey from that team on eBay. I think sportsmerch had a reputation of '2' at the time (he now has '3'), and the item has been relisted at least once, with zero bids of course.

The Seller doesn't like to answer questions about provenance, or how he came to have the jersey, which I guess is not all that unusual...but at the same time, being reticent about those kinds of questions is not a great idea when you've got no Positive feedback to speak of.

I did finally get him to answer one question for me; I asked what size the jersey was, and his response was '44'. Now, I'm no expert, but having watched extensive video of Wally Backman in 2007, I'm thinking there is no way in Hell that the man wore anything like a '44' jersey. A '44', as nearly as I can estimate, would be about a 'Large', if something were sized in that way - is that right? Backman appears to be about a 2XL.

[gingi79]

If Wally is wearing a jersey tagged in the 40's, I'd be hesitant. See the photo below, it's huge on him and he's a portly guy. I always laughed when Jim Yackel had his 1983 jersey for sale and it was a 38! His pants size can't be in the 30's anymore. Not that I'm one to talk, the last time I fit in a 38 jersey, Wally did

[godwulf]

Actually, I believe that particular photo shows Wally wearing some kind of warm-up or bp type pullover, which he frequently did during games, rather than the regular jersey.

I can't find any good pictures of Backman wearing the type of jersey in the auction (though I know from watching the show that he wore one, of course), but here's a photo of him a few years later, in which his physique is pretty much the same.