If you want to incite uproar on Twitter, mention Wally Backman. Just Tweet something innocuous like, “I saw Wally Backman at my corner store this morning buying coffee and a buttered roll,” and watch the response.

First, people will speculate that the sighting means he’s joining your local Major League Baseball team to fill some vacant coaching position. Some people will think this is terrible news, and other people will argue that it’s great news.

Then, once everyone realizes that the reported purchase of the buttered roll indicates little more than that Wally Backman purchased a buttered roll, people will spin it to fit with whatever they already believe about Backman.

“Coffee and a buttered roll! What an honest, blue-collar breakfast,” one will Tweet. “He’s perfect for this town.”

But then someone else will be all, “Coffee and a buttered roll!? That’s the same breakfast George Bamberger favored, and he was a terrible manager!”

Then the first guy will reply to the other guy like, “You’re ignorant! Many great managers have sworn by coffees and buttered rolls!” And the second guy will say, “Why do you love him so much? I’ll murder you dead!” Then the first guy will respond, “I’m cuckolding you as we speak!”

And it’ll go on and on like that until everyone realizes Twitter is stupid and that buttered rolls have little predictive power for managerial ability.

That’s the main thing: Twitter is pretty stupid. It can be a valuable tool for monitoring breaking news and a fun vehicle of validation for those that try to traffic in succinct one-liners, but it is a miserable forum for debate.

Anything worth arguing at any great length is almost by its nature too nuanced to be stripped down to 140-character bursts, and the immediacy and impersonality inherent in the medium encourage inflammatory implications (and interpretations). But then of course it’s people driving Twitter, and eschewing intelligent discussion in favor of incessant, oversimplified polemics is really nothing new in any forum in which humans interact.

I get sucked in, too, of course. But mostly I resort to sarcastic trolling, extending the most fervent common arguments to absurd heights for easy entertainment. It’s cheap and shticky, but it’s great for that whole validation thing.

Which is to confess: When I blame Carlos Beltran or heap shame upon Jose Reyes or worship at the altar of Wally Backman, I don’t really mean any of those things. I mean rather to mock those that do say and believe those things, especially if they deliver them with a certain Twitterish zeal.

The latter issue is the one currently en Twitter vogue. If you believe what you read, Backman is either very likely or definitely not joining the Nationals as Davey Johnson’s third-base coach and protege. And by now most Mets fans seem certain that Backman will either be the single best or absolute worst Major League manager of all time, when the truth is very obviously somewhere in the middle.

I can attest that Backman has a tremendous knowledge of the young players in the Mets’ system — and not only those he managed in Brooklyn and Binghamton. I believe his players really do respect him and enjoy playing for him, and that he is probably a strong motivator.

But I imagine if he were managing the Major League Mets I would grow frustrated with some of his in-game strategies, and that he might need to temper his temper to avoid the type of back-page nonsense that has tormented the organization in recent years.

I am likely biased a bit toward Backman now because — as some of his staunch allies have been eager to point out — he has been a very obliging and helpful guest for multiple SNY.tv video interviews over the past couple of years, and because I don’t believe there’s any such thing as unbiased journalism (or anything). But it shouldn’t offend Wally or anyone to hear that I expect he would have strengths and weaknesses as a Major League manager, just like everyone else in the entire world.

Wally Backman was an ’86 Met, and his presence in the organization is a pleasant reminder of that year to the legions of fans nostalgic for those dirty-uniformed mustache heroes that dominated the National League.

On and off the field he has suffered trials and enjoyed triumphs. Multiple Major League organizations, including the current Mets, have deemed him worthy of stewarding their precious Minor League commodities. The Diamondbacks saw fit to fire him less than a week after naming him their Major League manager.

If and when he finds a job managing in the bigs, he will be hailed as a hero if his team succeeds and chastised as a goat if they fail. In either case, his effect will likely be overstated, as a manager’s influence usually is.