Wilmer Difo scores winning run as Pirates edge Reds on Roberto Clemente Day

Wilmer Difo saw opportunity and drew inspiration from the man being honored throughout baseball, racing toward home plate the way he envisioned Roberto Clemente would have five decades ago.

Difo was on second base when Colin Moran hit a sharp grounder down the first base line, where Joey Votto blocked the ball. Votto reached down and tossed a sidearm throw to pitcher Mychal Givens at first.

As Givens spun and threw to Tucker Barnhart, Difo slid headfirst past the Cincinnati Reds catcher and touched home plate to lift the Pittsburgh Pirates to a 5-4 walk-off win Wednesday night on MLB’s Roberto Clemente Day before an announced crowd of 9,320 at PNC Park.

“It’s made me really happy to be able to help the team win, especially on such a special day where we’re honoring Roberto Clemente,” Difo said. “I’m pretty sure that he’s looking down on us and is very proud of all of us, because this is the way that he liked to play.”

The win put the Pirates (54-91) in position to sweep the Reds (75-71) when they meet Thursday afternoon in the three-game series finale. The Pirates are 0-13 when trying to complete a sweep, and are the only team in baseball without one this season.

The Pirates celebrated Roberto Clemente Day by adorning PNC Park with the late Hall of Fame right fielder’s No. 21 – wearing it on their jerseys, in black and gold on the pitcher’s mound and stenciled into the grass in front of the 21-foot wall named in his honor in right field – and Clemente’s oldest son, Luis, threw out the ceremonial first pitch.

Pirates manager Derek Shelton called the walk-off win “a nice way to end Clemente Day.” In an interesting twist of fate, the final play involved three players wearing No. 21 in honor of Clemente. Pirates players and coaches wore it on their uniforms, but MLB also granted special permission to Votto as the Reds’ Clemente Award nominee and to Givens (3-3) because his great grandparents are natives of Puerto Rico.

Difo, a native of the Dominican Republic, was the lone Latin American player to make an appearance for the Pirates. And that came in a pinch-hitting role, only after the Reds rallied to tie the game with two outs in the eighth inning when Kyle Farmer hit lefty Sam Howard’s first-pitch slider 381 feet into the left field bleachers for his 14th home run.

The Pirates got a solid start from Mitch Keller, who recovered from a two-run first inning to allow four hits and two walks while striking out three on 92 pitches over five innings. The Reds, however, jumped out to a 2-0 lead as Keller threw 32 pitches in the first inning. Jonathan India hit a leadoff single and scored when Votto grounded out to second, and Max Schrock drew a walk and scored on a Mike Moustakas single.

“I thought in the first he was a little tentative, and then he bounced back,” Shelton said. “He really commanded the ball after that and had a really solid start after the first inning.”

Keller got through a 1-2-3 second inning on nine pitches, and escaped trouble in the third thanks to a pair of plays in left field. Ben Gamel robbed India of a home run when he caught a deep fly against the wall for the first out, but missed a sliding catch on a fly ball down the line by Joey Votto. Nick Castellanos tried to score but Gamel threw from a seated position to third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes, whose relay throw to catcher Jacob Stallings beat Castellanos to home plate.

Yoshi Tsutusgo doubled to the North Side Notch to score Hayes to cut it to 2-1. Bryan Reynolds followed with a game-tying RBI triple down the right field line, losing his helmet while rounding second. Moran’s sacrifice fly to left drove in Reynolds for the go-ahead run. Tsutsugo drove in another run in the fourth with a single to center that scored Hoy Park for a 4-2 lead.

The Reds cut it to 4-3 in the seventh against Chad Kuhl, who started the inning by hitting Tucker Barnhart with a pitch. Barnhart reached third on Shogo Akiyama’s single to right and scored on India’s sacrifice fly to left. Farmer’s homer tied it, before Chris Stratton (6-1) retired the side in the ninth to set the stage for Difo’s heroics.

Difo led off the ninth by lofting a fly ball down the left field line. Schrock missed it, losing his footing and falling as the ball bounced in fair territory for a double. Givens intentionally walked Bryan Reynolds to put runners in scoring position for Moran.

Votto bobbled Moran’s grounder, giving Difo time to round third and head for home to score the winning run. Pirates manager Derek Shelton credited third base coach Joey Cora for sending Difo home on the play but Difo sounded like someone who already had his mind made up.

“I’m going to be honest with you: I don’t remember seeing Joey,” Difo said. “I don’t know if he was holding me, or I don’t know if he was telling me to go, but I saw that pitcher take off towards first base, and I just felt like I had an opportunity to go home, and I took it. I took advantage of the situation.”

It was fitting that a Latin American player scored the game-winning run, as Shelton said it felt like Roberto Clemente was with the team in spirit.

“That’s the way he played, full-out all the time,” Shelton said. “To win that game like that was really special on a day that’s really important to the city of Pittsburgh, the Pirates, the Clemente family, the island of Puerto Rico. It was really cool.”