[CentOS] script question

Thu Jun 4 13:47:02 UTC 2009
Jerry Geis <geisj at pagestation.com>

I have this line:
             ALSA=`aplay --version`

in a script. when I execute the script I get the message
 line 187: --version: command not found

when I do "aplay --version" on the command line it works just fine.

What is happening here, --version is a valid command line option?

Thanks,

jerry