Jonah Heim rarely calls his dad, the close father-son pair typically exchange text messages. So James Heim furrowed his brow when his 25-year-old son’s call lit up the screen.
The Aug. 31 trade deadline is fast approaching, so that’s where the elder Heim’s mind jumped as he answered the call.
“I said, ‘Hi son, did you get traded?’ And he replied, ‘No, actually, I’ve been called up,” Heim relayed in a message. “I was shocked. It’s a day that I was hoping would come, but not quite sure when it would come, and wasn’t really expecting it to happen this week.”
James immediately starting crying. When Jonah hung up to call his grandmother with the news, the elder Heim went out into his driveway in Amherst, N.Y., and started yelling at the top of his lungs.
“I was trying to hold back some tears. It’s been a long time coming,” Jonah said in a call with reporters Tuesday. “Rightfully so, I don’t think he’s stopped screaming.”
Heim makes his major league debut Tuesday with the A’s against the Rangers seven years after he played his first professional game. While with the A’s taxi squad, Heim caught a number of bullpen sessions with the A’s pitching staff — so a familiarity grew along with the time he spent in spring training pre-coronavirus shutdown. The A’s optioned left-handed hitting catcher Austin Allen on Monday and recalled Heim; Oakland had always planned to bring Heim into the active roster at some point this season.
Because the taxi squad rolls with the team on the road, manager Bob Melvin could tell Heim in person — not through minor league coaches — that he’d be starting behind the dish in his debut.
“BoMel grabbed me and sat me down and told me to look at his lineup and it took me a couple of seconds to realize what was going on when I saw my name on there,” Heim said.”I was speechless at the time, really excited.”
The Baltimore Orioles drafted Heim out of Amherst High School in the fourth round in 2013. After a season in the Tampa Bay Rays organization, the A’s traded Joey Wendle for Heim in 2017.
Known for his exceptional defensive abilities, Heim turned a corner at the plate in the 2019 season. After batting .282 with five home runs and a .801 OPS in 50 games with the Midland RockHounds, the A’s promoted him to Triple-A Las Vegas midseason. He took off — batting. 358 with a .968 OPS in 35 games. It earned him a spring training invite for 2020.
Doubly essential to Heim’s role on the active roster is his ability as a switch hittter. With Sean Murphy taking on mostly left-handed pitching, Heim will face most right-handers. When the A’s are home, Heim would shuttle down to San Jose to get reps against James Kaprielian, Grant Holmes, Daulton Jefferies and Parker Dunshee — amongst others — primarily from the left-side.
It’s a role Heim had prepared himself for at a young age.
“Jonah has been able to hit a baseball since about the age of 2,” James Heim said. “When he turned about 11 or 12, he came to me and said, ‘You know what? I want to learn how to hit left-handed because hitting from the right side is boring.’ And it was probably then that I realized he was serious about playing baseball.”
Heim would drag his dad to the park every day to work on switch hitting. It’s all he ever wanted to do.
“That’s when I knew this is what he really, really wanted to do,” Heim said. “From that time on is really when I just focused on giving him every tool he needed to be successful.”
The Heim family won’t be able to usher Jonah into baseball’s final step. Due to fan limitations, James, his brothers, mother, friends and family won’t be able to watch those decades of switch-hitting practice at the park and years under minor league duress come to fruition live.
“Yeah that’s obviously disappointing, but we understand with everything that’s going on in the world right now with COVID,” Jonah Heim said. “They’re definitely going to be watching, they’re going to be cheering, they’re going to have as many people over the house as they can. So it’s definitely going to be exciting.”
A group of 15 people will watch Heim and the A’s take on the Texas Rangers on television, outside in a socially-distanced gathering.
“He’s worked his tail off to get where he’s at today,” the elder Heim said. “He sacrificed a lot of friends and sleepovers and all kind of things you do as a youth to focus on baseball his entire life. And for it to finally pay off is so amazing and humbling, not just as a parent but a person who loves the game. Everyone that plays in a big leagues beats extreme odds to make it to that level and to know that my son is part of that is pretty amazing and special.”
