Female MLB scout from Wallingford was a true trailblazer

When she was growing up, Cynthia Washburne didn’t get to play Little League baseball. So to watch one of her former softball players at Eastern Connecticut State University go on to become one of three female scouts in Major League Baseball was something that Washburne couldn’t even imagine when she was younger.

The former player was Kelly Rodman of Wallingford, who became a scout for the Yankees in 2014.

“It can happen,” said Washburne, now an associate athletic director at Eastern and a member of the school’s Hall of Fame. “Dream the dream.”

Rodman did. She loved her job, but she just went out and did it and didn’t make a big deal about being a pioneer in her field. She was the same way about her cancer diagnosis. Rodman died of cancer at age 44 on March 4.

The Yankees had a moment of silence for Rodman before their spring training game that day in Florida.

“The New York Yankees mourn the loss of Kelly Rodman, a trusted scout and treasured member of this organization,” the Yankees Twitter account read that day. “Kelly was a huge part of our amateur scouting department & represented the Yankees with dignity and class while earning the admiration of countless people in the game.”

Washburne was able to visit Rodman in the hospital about a week before her passing.

“This is my interpretation — I didn’t feel in my conversation with her that there was a desperation or a sadness,” Washburne said. “We were just able to be able to have a conversation.

Drayden Van Dyke hopped off Charlatan after winning the sixth race by 10 1⁄ lengths at Santa

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Anita on Saturday and celebrated by trading elbow taps in the winner’s circle. No traditional post-race handshakes during the coronavirus pandemic.

The jockey, like all riders at the Southern California track where no fans were in attendance, had already had his temperature taken. The jockeys’ room has “hand sanitizer everywhere you look,”

Van Dyke said.

Bugler Jay Cohen blew his horn to an empty grandstand, with only trainers, jockeys and those working directly with the horses on hand to hear.

“It’s a little strange looking up there and not seeing anybody,” Cohen said before playing the traditional “Call to the Post” that greets runners as they hit the track.

The usual scent of handcarved sandwiches — turkey, corned beef and prime rib — wasn’t wafting through the air. The food stands were shut down. There was no one manning the