Georgians, please read. Such an interesting upbringing: Allen was born March twenty-fifth, nineteen eighty-nine on Sapelo Island, Georgia, a tiny barrier island off the coast reachable only by ferry. He grew up in Hog Hammock, the island’s only community, home to fewer than fifty Saltwater Geechee residents descended from West African slaves. There were no schools, no stores, no cell service. He took that ferry every day to McIntosh County Academy in Darien, and because practice ran past the last boat, he stayed with teammates’ families on the mainland during the week. His father was first mate on the ferry, his mother cooked at the Reynolds Mansion, and his great-aunt Cornelia Bailey was the island’s griot, its oral historian. He was the sixth of seven kids.