SAN FRANCISCO — After catching Travis Ishikawa’s pennant-winning home run ball, fan Frank Burke saw no need to drive a hard bargain.

The Oakdale resident floated the idea of trading the ball back for World Series tickets, but when the Giants hesitated Burke surrendered quickly.

He planned on giving the ball back for nothing.

“Ishikawa is the guy who hit the ball,” Burke said Friday. “I’m just the lucky guy who caught it.

“Knowing Travis and his history and what it’s taken for him to get here? I wanted him to have the ball,” Burke said.

As it turned out, Burke wound up with an Ishikawa-autographed bat — hand-delivered with a personal thank you from the October hero himself.

And after he told his story on KNBR on Friday morning to Gary Radnich, Larry Krueger and Kate Scott, he wound up with those tickets after all. The Giants called Burke to offer him four tickets to next Friday’s Game 3 against the Kansas City Royals.

Ishikawa, a career journeyman, hit the three-run walk-off home run Thursday night to catapult the Giants into the World Series.

The ball will wind up in franchise lore, right up there with Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” in 1951. But Thursday night, it wound up in Burke’s lap.

“He torched the ball. And as the ball went up and started coming out, I’m like, ‘Man, that ball is headed our way,’ ” said Burke, who was sitting atop the right-field wall. “And as it got closer, I’m like, ‘That ball is going to hit the wall right below us. We’re going to the World Series! We’re going to the World Series!’ “

“And then I’m like, ‘Wait … that ball is carrying. And that ball is coming right at me.’ “

Burke, who owns AG Transmission Repair in Oakdale, grew up playing baseball as a pitcher, first baseman and outfielder in Daly City. As the ball came sinking down, he kept telling himself “soft hands, soft hands” so that the ball wouldn’t clank back down to the field.

The ball struck his left hand and slipped out momentarily before he wrapped it up for good.

“Everybody wanted to take pictures of me with the ball, with themselves, selfies — whatever you want to call it,” he said. “They wanted to touch the ball. So I spent about 15-20 minutes doing that with everybody who was around me the whole game. It was a great crowd of people.”

Once the impromptu photo shoot wrapped up, he tracked down a Giants official to help him get the ball authenticated — a process that prevents the counterfeits and disputes that dogged some of the Barry Bonds long balls of a previous era.

It was during the authentication process that the Giants told Burke that Ishikawa wanted the ball. The negotiations were half-hearted at best.

“They said, ‘Well, we’ll get you a signed bat — Ishikawa, (Buster) Posey, whatever you want,’ ” Burke said. “I did make a mention in the beginning that I would love some World Series tickets. But the person I was talking to said, ‘I don’t know if that will be possible, blah, blah, blah.’

“So I said, ‘All right. I was going to give the ball back either way.’ “

Burke was whisked down to the door of the Giants clubhouse, where Ishikawa pried himself away from the champagne celebration to come get his new prized possession.

“He said, ‘Hang on, I’m going to go get you a bat,’ ” Burke said. “He went and got me a bat, signed it for me and the rest is history.”

Burke, who was born in San Francisco, says he’s been a Giants fan “since I could walk — 45 years. I’m Croix de Candlestick, man.”

By Friday morning, he was part of lore himself. The Mercury News had had tweeted a photo of Ishikawa and Burke after the game, generating a social media buzz, and he awoke to requests from KNBR and other outlets.

“When I get off the phone with you, I’ve got Channel 5 from the Bay Area and Channel 4 from the Bay Area. They’re downstairs in my shop. I’ve got to give them interviews,” Burke said. “KQED, I did a phone interview with them. Of course, my two local newspapers. It’s just one of those days.

“It’s nothing I really looked for. They just searched me out. Hey, take your 15 minutes of fame, right?”

Contact Daniel Brown at dbrown@mercurynews.com.