Back when he was Allegheny County's manager, Bob Webb had to deal with a mountain of questionable property assessments, a couple of mass killings and the local response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

So it's odd that something as trite as scoring a baseball game has put him in the national spotlight.

But in the top of the fifth inning of Sunday's Pirates game, Andy LaRoche hit a slow bouncing ball to the left of the mound. The Milwaukee Brewers pitcher, the powerful and humongous C.C. Sabathia -- he's like Wisconsin in pants -- hustled down to bare-hand the bouncing ball.

Then he dropped it.

Mr. Webb, in his role as the PNC Park official scorer, immediately scored it a hit rather than an error -- and that turned out to be the only hit the Pirates got all afternoon.

To put that another way -- as many later would -- Mr. Webb's decision "cost" Mr. Sabathia a no-hitter.

The gaping maw of modern sports media needs constant feeding. Mr. Webb's adult sons, Dan and Steve, were in bars Sunday night when each looked up to mute televisions to see dear old dad's face on "Sportscenter."

They were soon calling home to see if he were alive.

The Brewers filed a formal appeal to Major League Baseball to overturn Mr. Webb's decision and give Mr. Sabathia an error -- along with the first retroactive no-hitter in big league history. But MLB issued a ruling early last evening upholding Mr. Webb's call.

Earlier yesterday, I invited Mr. Webb to lunch to ask him to compare and contrast dealing with property appeals and scoring appeals. I wanted to know who was tougher, the homeowners or the "homers" who believe their team was shafted.

His decision came with customary swiftness. His harshest critics are mostly in Wisconsin now, far different from when "danger lurked in these environs." He prefers it that way.

I've known Mr. Webb for 20 years, almost as long as he's been scoring games but not as long as he worked in government. He handles his critics more graciously than most. To use the old Irish saying, he can tell you to go to hell and almost have you enjoy the journey. So I wasn't surprised that he shrugged off the post-game rant of Brewers manager Ned Yost in the same way he once did the observations of "Jumpin' Johnny" DeFazio on County Council.

"I respect the advocacy, but I don't confuse it with impartiality," he said. "I have no intention of changing the call.

"It was a hit all the way for me."

He called that play as soon as Mr. LaRoche's foot touched the first-base bag. Major League Baseball asks its scorers to score plays immediately whenever possible, without replays. He later checked the replay at a Brewers official's request but didn't waver.

(You certainly don't want to see many replays of the Pirates, now in their 16th consecutive losing season. As the Carbolic Smoke Ball, Pittsburgh's top source for fake news, put it in a recent headline: "Umpires Boycott Use of Instant Replay in Pittsburgh Pirates Games, Cite Health Hazards of Watching Pirates in Slow Motion.")

Mr. Webb is one of four scorers, so he does about 20 games a year, and the last time he changed his call the Pirates were playing in Three Rivers Stadium. He says he never roots for a hit, but he had to know the odds of the depleted Pirates lineup getting a hit off Mr. Sabathia, the best pitcher in baseball, were about as slim as the 290-pound Mr. Sabathia is not.

Having dozens of the nation's sportswriters and jabberers, including every last arm of the ESPN Empire, call his cell phone over the long Labor Day weekend didn't shake him much. More than one reporter remarked that they didn't expect an official scorer to deal so deftly with media.

"I've done it in different formats before," he said. "It's a game I love and respect, but compared to those other things, it is indeed a game."

Mr. Webb was gratified that baseball's scoring review committee upheld him. He thought it generous that a top baseball official stated he "is held in high regard." As for comparing the two appeals processes he knows best, he laughed.

This one "is shorter than assessing houses. It looks like we'll be done with this in 72 hours."