EASTLAKE, Ohio — As the batter bolts around the bases and the hooky-playing fans holler, Allan Wylie sits quietly in the broadcast booth, his black leather chair angled toward his play-by-play partner, his head tilted toward the carpet, the temples of his black sunglasses tucked beneath his headset.

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The hitter is attempting to convert a dropped third strike into a Little League home run, and Allan’s legs are racing just as rapidly. Right leg. Left leg. Both legs, with enough vigor to burn a hole in his khaki shorts or to make the upper level quake at Classic Park, home of the High-A Lake County Captains.

As the commotion unfolds on the infield, Allan listens. To his broadcast partner. To the crowd. To the shrieking in the home dugout. To the camera operators frantically selecting the optimal feed to chronicle such a moment.

Then he speaks, providing listeners locally and across the country his analysis: that the runner could have glided into second, maybe third if the ball trickled far enough down the right field line, but this? No one anticipated this.

Before he ever studied a nine-inning Ernie Harwell masterclass or recorded his own commentary with his dad in the stands of a college basketball game or received a standing ovation from 75 other aspiring sportscasters, Allan was an infant surrounded by doctors in a Northeast Ohio hospital room. They flocked to his appointment because they figured they could practice medicine for another 40 years and never encounter another diagnosis of Leber’s Congenital Amaurosis.

Allan’s father, Scott, a devoted Cleveland fan, remembers lying down that night and mentally crossing off a future in sports for his son.

Now, he laughs at his premature dismissal. He closes his eyes in the back of the broadcast booth. He doesn’t need to watch. Allan will fill in the blanks.

The allure of any sporting event is the opportunity to see something unprecedented, something unforgettable, something that doesn’t compute. For Allan, the visual he constructs in his mind, the foundation he draws from to relay information to his audience, is unlike anything anyone else could create.

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It’s his visual and his alone, and it’s his mission to share it with the world.

Allan has been blind since birth.

His mentor, Neil Hartman, a longtime Philadelphia sportscaster, marvels at how routine Allan makes it all sound, despite the unusual reality.

“You’d have no idea.”

Leber’s affects one of every 50,000 babies, according to the Cleveland Clinic. The genetic disorder causes the retinas to malfunction.

Doctors told Scott and Kim their son would probably possess some sort of gift, and they would recognize it before Allan did. Scott taught Allan how to play the piano when Allan was 3. He would return home from work to find Allan hammering away at the keys, striking the daunting chords of “The Imperial March” from Star Wars.

The gift was quickly evident: an unparalleled recall.

Allan’s foray into broadcasting began as a toddler tagging along with his grandfather to high school games simply to listen to the band. Eventually, the sassy trumpets failed to capture Allan’s attention.

By 7, he was instead asking about playcalls, formations, penalties and players’ sizes. By 9, he brought a recorder to MAC basketball games, independent league Lake Erie Crushers games and high school contests, and he and Scott hosted their own broadcast from the stands.

Allan met Cleveland announcers Joe Tait, Tom Hamilton and Michael Reghi and he’d hurry home to dig up their material. He studied their tendencies, which syllables they emphasized, how they painted a picture with verbal brushstrokes. He was in his room, bouncing on his dark gray exercise ball, but he felt like he was lounging courtside at Quicken Loans Arena, among a sea of fans clad in red No. 23 jerseys, with an unfiltered view of LeBron James stalking his prey on a chasedown block.

“That really pulled me in,” Allan says.

But how do you describe something everyone is seeing, or something no one has ever seen before, when you, yourself, have never been able to see?

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For Allan to replicate what his heroes deliver on the mic, he builds his own world, full of intricate details he’s picked up from a lifetime of careful listening. Only he is familiar with his vision of green outfield grass and sky-high yellow uprights and the size-16 sneakers that squeak on the shiny hardwood.

By 12, he started to solve how to transform his imagination into analysis. From his seat at the MAC championship game, he implored one team’s players to capitalize on their size advantage in the post instead of relying on outside jumpers. When a fan returned to his seat behind Allan and Scott at halftime, he realized Allan was blind. He couldn’t believe Allan, leaning on his hearing and his knowledge of the roster, was able to summon such a timely takeaway.

Six years ago, Allan and Scott attended a four-team college hockey showcase in Detroit. Scott narrated the action:

Michigan has the puck. Here they go. OK, Allan. He shoots! Ohhh, nooo. I’m so sorry. He shoots again! Ohhh.

Allan, now a high school senior, still pokes fun at his dad’s play-by-play diction. When the puck caromed to the far corner of the rink, players shielded Scott’s view and his commentary tapered. He apologized to Allan, but he didn’t need to.

Using cues from the crowd, from the players’ skates, and from the referees’ whistles, Allan knew what was unfolding on the ice.

“He’s like, ‘Yeah, dad. I’m good.’” Scott says.

Allan’s passion for sportscasting pushed his parents to enroll him in a weeklong camp in Chicago for three consecutive summers. Kids ranging in age from 10-18 performed sports radio updates, talk shows, debates and broadcasts.

Allan completed a radio update, a minute-long monologue covering the news and scores from the day, without any preparation. He was the only camper without a script resting in front of him.

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“To be able to do that if you were sighted would be impressive enough,” says Hartman, who oversees five camp sessions each year.

The campers read off a teleprompter to deliver an on-camera report. Allan tried to upload his copy onto his BrailleNote tablet, but it wouldn’t work properly.

“Just read it to me,” Allan told his dad.

Scott read through the script once. That was enough; Allan convinced his dad that rather than spend the night memorizing lines, they should go watch the NBA Finals game that was about to tip.

The next day, Scott feared a train wreck. But when he picked up Allan at the end of the session, Hartman told him Allan was one of the few who nailed his first take.

“He’s going to have a career in sports,” Hartman says. “I can tell you that right now.”

It’s all he covets. He spends Saturdays in his room listening to college football broadcasts. When his Lions or Michigan Wolverines are playing, he prefers to be left alone in his bubble of agony, admonishing struggling players even though he constantly reminds himself they can’t hear him.

This summer, Allan teamed with Logan Potosky on seven MiLB TV calls for Lake County, the High-A affiliate of the Guardians. He has provided commentary on local high school football and basketball games, as well as contests for the Cleveland Charge, the G-League affiliate of the Cavaliers.

Initially, his broadcast partners would tap him on the shoulder when it seemed appropriate for Allan to offer input. They quickly learned that method created a forced, unnatural dialogue. Allan didn’t need a green light; he knew how and when to chime in with his analysis.

“‘The world is wide open. Let’s figure out how to make it work,’” Kim says. “He’s taken that and run with it. It’s so much fun right now watching him do this.”

Rain pelted the metal roof of the Classic Park broadcast booth. A skunk escaped from beneath the tarp. Scott asked his son if he was ready to head home.

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“Am I driving?” Allen quipped.

He’s not as chipper before games, when he spends his final hour at home alone in his room, door shut, cramming into his memory bank one last batch of statistics or one last fact about a player’s hometown.

“The car ride over,” Scott starts, shaking his head and smiling.

“Yeah,” Kim adds, “don’t talk to him.”

He’ll offer one or two words during the 40-minute drive. He’ll ignore any texts or calls. Allan feels jitters before every game. Aside from a brief flirtation with being a police dispatcher, this is all he wants to do, all he has ever wanted to do. He urges the clock to tick faster toward first pitch or kickoff or tipoff. Once he hears a whistle or a baseball smacking the catcher’s mitt, he exhales.

The easy part begins.

Before the first pitch of a recent High-A game between Lake County and the Lansing Lugnuts, Allan has a magnetic pull on the room. He recites college football scores and upcoming schedules, for high-profile programs and for little-known outfits that play before a sea of mostly deserted metal bleachers. He shares that his senior year is mostly “boring,” but he does have late arrival and early dismissal, the holy grail for any teenager.

The windows are open, and Allan is getting a feel for the atmosphere, the PA announcer, the threatening clouds. He’s imagining how the players are positioned, how each starting pitcher’s repertoire might play, how a crowd of 1,325 might sound after certain developments.

“A lot of what I do and how I do it,” he says, “is just by listening.”

He attempts to place himself in the cleats of each player, to feel the adrenaline that fuels their home run trot, to sense their relief after a slump-busting hit, to dwell in their disappointment after a futile lunge toward a third strike out of the zone.

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He asks himself what he would want out of a broadcast if he were listening at home. There’s no one better to ask than himself. This is the kid who would follow the action of several games on different devices all at once, compelling his mom to refer to his room as “a noise factory.”

After Potosky opens the broadcast and describes the first pitch, Allan details the logjam in the Midwest League standings and Lake County’s flickering postseason hopes. He segues from recapping the leadoff hitter’s single to providing background on the following hitter, who, he says, hails from Panama.

It’s not just memorization, though. It’s weaving in information seamlessly, and in a timely manner. It’s more art than science.

Throughout the game, he incorporates intel he obtained from a morning chat with Lansing broadcaster Jesse Goldberg-Strassler, who offered analysis of their starting pitcher’s arsenal and opponents’ stolen-base success rate.

Allan offers expertise on Cleveland’s farm system, remarking that Kahlil Watson was once a top-five prospect with the Marlins, but following a midseason trade, tumbled to 16th in the Guardians’ organization. He notes Ethan Hankins’ typical fastball velocity and his arduous path back from injury. He mentions Junior Sanquintin is a native of Baní, Dominican Republic, praises the country’s depth of talent and recalls that their World Baseball Classic team beat the Braves, 9-0, in an exhibition game in March.

“He has, like, a Google Drive in his brain,” Hartman says. “How he researches everything and retains it is just mind-boggling. I don’t know how he does it. I’m in awe that he’s as accurate as he is.”

Potosky lists the teams Danny Bautista Jr.’s father played for, including the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks.

“…who upset the Yankees,” Allan adds, “who were going for, get this, their fourth straight World Series title.”

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Scott shakes his head and laughs, impressed that Allan, born five years after that World Series, had that nugget at the ready.

Allan later mentions fellow wunderkind Ethan Salas, a prized Padres catching prospect.

“He’s the same age as I am,” Allan says. “And he’s already in Double A!”

There’s no preparing for a dropped third strike that evolves into a 360-foot, run-scoring scamper. He pauses for a few seconds to process what he heard.

“That’s something you’re going to remember,” he says. “Obviously, when you think of a run, that’s the last thing you expect. … That’s something you see on MLB The Show. That’s not really something you see in real life.”

Every broadcast offers teachable moments. He has learned when to deliver an extra dose of enthusiasm. He has learned to pack a series of conversation topics in case a lopsided score saps the game of its intrigue. He described it to his dad as shifting into “entertainment mode,” when he can ad-lib about mascots or college sports, and tie it all to the game at hand.

When Chase DeLauter approaches the plate, Allan notes he’s a product of James Madison University. He could only think of one other school with the nickname “Dukes”: Duquesne, which, he says, is set to face West Virginia, the alma mater of Lansing’s starting pitcher, in three days.

With the Captains ahead 12-0, Allan mentions pitcher Alaska Abney attended Coastal Carolina, the 2016 College World Series champion. He offers that the 2020 Chanticleers went undefeated in the regular season.

“Apparently a chanticleer is a rooster of some sort?” Allan asks, rhetorically. No one else in the room has the faintest idea.

A Watson home run makes it 13-1, and Allan says: “More icing on the cake for the Captains and, if you like cake, in my opinion, the more icing the better.” Eventually, rain interferes, and Allan compares the vacillation between drizzle and downpour to a sugar-fueled kid playing with the faucet.

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As the broadcast crew and team staffers wait for official word on the game ending after eight frames, Scott turns toward his son.

“Hey Allan,” he says, “if I would have told you this day would happen when you were 8 or 9, what would you have said?”

As a kid, Allen devoted hours to diving into the depths of YouTube to unearth broadcasts to examine. He and his dad spent chilly Friday nights in the fall composing commentary in the stands at high school football games, each of them creating a misty cloud every time they opened their mouths to supply some analysis.

Now, he was half of a broadcast team on MiLB TV, and on Thursday, he’ll sit in the back of Hamilton’s booth at Progressive Field for an inning as the Cleveland Guardians take on the Baltimore Orioles.

What would he have said?

“I would have said you’re crazy.”

The future is clear to Allan: He’ll host a weekday sports talk show — The Blind Truth, he’ll call it — and then contribute to a team’s broadcast in some capacity, whether in a pregame or postgame role, as a color analyst or a third commentator in the booth. He doesn’t want sympathy. He wants guidance.

“It’s trying to get people to believe that I can do it,” Allan says. “And how I do that is I just show them. Sometimes it’s almost like they’re doing you a favor. ‘Oh, um, we can get him on there.’ They think it’s just some blind kid wanting to do something he’s passionate about. But when I get on there, I make sure to leave a great footprint of what I can actually do.

“When you talk to a blind person, a lot of people think, ‘Well, he can’t do this, he can’t do that.’ Some of that might be true, but I can paint a picture for people. I can broadcast. I can commentate for people. I can analyze things. Even though I can’t see, I can still do that. That’s what I really want to show people, is that I’m not just some random blind kid to feel bad for.”

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Allan has visited colleges, in search of a program with a track record of vaulting students toward professional careers in the industry and a location that won’t coddle him because of his condition. Nothing unnerves him more than someone talking to him as if he’s a helpless child. He’s insistent he can do anything anyone else can do.

His mom agrees, with a couple of caveats: sharpshooting or race car driving.

“I don’t know why I couldn’t be a race car driver,” Allan counters.

“No idea,” his mom says.

Allan landed the Captains gig through the Cleveland Sight Center, a nonprofit that assists the visually impaired with various programs, including a Summer Youth Work Experience Program. The representative who connected Allan with the Captains is also visually impaired. He told Scott: “Your son is repping all of us.”

“There are some people out there,” Allan says, “who have disabilities just like I do. Maybe they want to go into this field. Maybe it’s not even this field, maybe they just want to chase their dreams. If I can be somebody they look up to and they can say, ‘He didn’t quit, he kept going, even when it was hard,’ then I’ll feel like I’ve really accomplished something.

“This is bigger than me.”

(Top left photo of Allan Wylie with Scott Zurilla, play-by-play voice of the Cleveland Charge; Right photo of Wylie with Lake County Captains play-by-play voice Logan Potosky: Courtesy of Wylie Family)