CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — Wally Backman stopped midsentence to reach for another cigarette.

“Hey, it’s only my third,” he said with a sheepish grin, failing to mention he had started 20 minutes ago. These weren’t those lightweight smokes, either: Backman prefers full-strength Marlboros when talking baseball. He is a human time machine back to the 1980s.

Backman, the former Mets infielder and minor-league manager, is currently managing the Long Island Ducks in the independent Atlantic League, which serves an experimental lab for Major League Baseball. It’s a strange, new world for Backman: the bases have been enlarged to prevent runners from stepping on fielders’ feet, mound visits from the dugout are prohibited and shifts will be outlawed — two defenders must be positioned on either side of second base. And sometime this summer the most radical change will introduce motion sensors to call balls and strikes.

The irony of an old-school warrior having a role in revolutionizing the game — or ruining it, depending on your viewpoint — is not lost on Backman. A 5-foot-9-inch cylinder of a man, he hardly looks the part of a modernist. Even with a 60th birthday around the corner, Backman still looks as if he could hold his own in an arm wrestling tournament.

“It’s like John McGraw dropped into the middle of our clubhouse,” said the Ducks pitching coach, Ed Lynch, referring to the legendary New York Giants manager whose genius — and temper — earned him 2,763 victories from 1899 through 1932, the second-most in major-league history.