On Wednesday night, Stan Wilson had just set his glasses on the nightstand and was dozing off in bed when his phone rang around 11 p.m.

“I looked at my wife and said, ‘Lord, I hope that’s not the alarm people,’ ” he said. “At work, I’ve had a couple of false alarms with our security (system) and I’ve had to get up and go. Then I looked over and saw it was him.”

“Him” is Stan’s son, Jacob, a former Bartlett High and University of Memphis standout who has been toiling in the minors since 2012 and has never had a major-league at-bat. Jacob never calls his father at that hour, so naturally Stan might have been concerned that the news was alarming in a different kind of way.

It turned out to be anything but.

“He said, ‘I’ve got to change my travel plans,’ ” Stan said. “I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘I’m going to Houston.’ And I said, ‘For what?’ He said, ‘Dad, I just got called up.’

“After I got off the phone, I looked at my wife and said, ‘So, what do we do now?’ ”

The answer was obvious. Start packing.

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The Wilson family is in Arlington, Texas, this weekend with the expectation that Jacob will make his major-league debut for the Oakland Athletics in the three-game series against the Texas Rangers.

His arrival is the result of a spate of injuries that has hit the A’s, the second-place team in the American League West. Wilson replaces third baseman Chad Pinder, who is on the 10-day injured list with hamstring issues.

Jacob, who will turn 31 on July 29, was with the A’s for Thursday’s game in Houston, but his flight from Las Vegas, where he was playing for the Triple-A Aviators, was delayed, and anyway, his baseball gear was already on its way to Reno for the next series.

Needless to say, it has been a hectic 48 or so hours. But Stan Wilson said it’s worth it to see his son achieve his dream.

“It’s something he has wanted and worked for his whole life,” he said. “When he got drafted (a 10th-round pick by the St. Louis Cardinals in 2012), we had an interesting situation where his second grade teacher had given them an assignment to write about what they wanted to be when they grew up. And he wrote that he wanted to be a professional baseball player. 

“So when he got drafted, somehow or other she still had that and sent it to him. This is something that as a kid . . . he’s always loved the game and he’s worked very hard for it, so for this to finally come true, it’s just an unbelievable thing.”

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And although he’s only now making the majors, Wilson has always been an unbelievable talent. At Bartlett, he was the star of three teams that reached the Class AAA state championship game, winning in 2007 and finishing as runner-up in 2006 and 2008.

“He was really good, no doubt about it,” said Phil Clark, who coached those Panthers teams and is now the athletic director for the Bartlett school system.

“Jake was a player. His junior year, we were like 40-5 and he drove in, I want to say close to 70 runs. But he loved taking ground balls just as much as he loved to hit. His arm was strong and he’s just been grinding — 30 years old and he’s made it to the big leagues.

“The bottom line is, Jake loves playing the game and he’s good at it.”

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After graduating from Bartlett, Wilson played at the University of Memphis, where he was named the Conference USA player of the year as a senior in 2012 after batting .320 with 17 home runs.

His professional career began at the low-A Batavia Muckdogs in Illinois that summer and he progressed through the Cardinals’ system, earning stints with the Memphis Redbirds in 2015 and 2016.

In 2017, he was selected by the Washington Nationals in the minor-league phase of the Rule 5 draft, and once again got as high as Triple-A, representing the Syracuse Chiefs in the minor-league All-Star Game in 2018. In June 2019, his journey took him to South Korea, where he played 68 games for the Lotte Giants.

“In AAA, you get paid good enough to survive,” Clark said. “Ain’t no doubt about that. But I know he’s had thoughts about ‘should I or shouldn’t I (keep chasing the dream).’ ”

Wilson re-signed with the Nationals in 2020 but didn’t play, with the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down the entire minor-league system. And with a baby due at the end of January 2021, those internal discussions were growing only louder. In fact, Stan Wilson said that his son had gone so far as to call and tell his agent that he was ready to call it a career.

A very good career at that. But two days later, Oakland came with a minor-league contract and an invitation to spring training. Prior to his call-up, he was batting a solid .288 with 14 homers and 46 RBIs with the Aviators.

Wilson is no overnight sensation. But like he wrote in the second grade, he is a big-leaguer.

“It was an opportunity he felt he didn’t need to pass up,” Stan Wilson said of the A’s offer. “He left for spring training three weeks after his daughter was born and it’s been a struggle. But looking over it through the years, it’s just been crazy. It’s been a wild ride for all of us.”