Growing up in Markham, Ontario, Jonah Tong was scrolling through a newspaper, trying to decide what sport to join. He noticed a local T-ball and softball league and told his mother that was what he wanted to do. While not avidly following Major League Baseball as a young kid, living just under half an hour from Toronto, his first experience at big league games was going to watch the Blue Jays.
“It wasn’t until I was growing up in my public school into high school years, when I started to more closely follow Major League Baseball,” said Tong, whose recent success earned him a promotion to the Brooklyn Cyclones at the end of April.
And a potential future in professional baseball wasn’t the right-hander’s focus until after high school graduation.
“It’s always in the back of your head where it’s measuring yourself against the other guys, especially in the Canadian circuit,” Tong explained in an interview with SNY. “I was more focused on trying to get to college, and then once I finished with Georgia (Premier Academy) and I was going to the MLB Draft League, I thought it could be a real possibility.”
Tong graduated high school in 2021 and with the COVID-19 season giving him an extra year before he attended North Dakota State, he took a trip to Arizona and decided he needed to have a conversation with his family about leaving Canada. He explained that he had to be somewhere else to really try to pursue baseball. That somewhere else ended up being the Georgia Premier Academy.
Tong had a friend who attended Georgia Premier, and followed the academy on Twitter (now X) to see highlights. He ended up receiving a direct message from the academy asking if he wanted to play baseball there. “Sure, why not?” was his response, and that sparked the conversation to get Tong down to Georgia for more baseball training.
This eventually led to an invite to the MLB Draft League for the 2022 campaign, where he played for the Frederick Keys in Maryland. While Tong rated highly in the league when it came to some of the advanced pitch metrics, his performances in games were not as strong. In 11.2 innings he posted a 10.80 ERA, allowing 14 hits and 10 walks, while striking out 14 batters.
“I got my teeth kicked in a little bit,” Tong said with a laugh. “Obviously the results weren’t great, and I wasn’t happy with that, but it was the first time I was able to see what my pitches were actually doing. It helped me to understand what type of pitcher I needed to be moving…