SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — His Giants teammates stood along the infield, resplendent in their gleaming, gold-threaded home uniforms.

Travis Ishikawa wore jeans.

His teammates received their 2010 World Series rings and prepared to take the field against the St. Louis Cardinals in front of a celebratory crowd at AT&T Park.

Ishikawa accepted his pale blue Tiffany box along with a few stiff hugs, left in the first inning and drove back to Fresno.

He gripped the steering wheel with aggrieved anger. He hadn’t left the parking lot. He already felt as if someone cut him off in traffic.

“I’d been designated for assignment and already cleared (waivers),” said Ishikawa, recalling that awkward day in April 2011. “It was cool, obviously, to be around all the guys that you sweated and bled with the year before to win that World Series. But it was tough, definitely, a very humbling experience. It didn’t feel good. It didn’t feel right.

“Truth be told, it was hard to see Brandon Belt in my locker. I came into the clubhouse, and he was in the locker I had the previous three years.”

Ishikawa, 31, looks back on those earlier years with the Giants and acknowledges it: He wasn’t a very good teammate. He had a sense of entitlement. He was a young man urgently and impatiently trying to carve out a career as an everyday player, and there were times he resented the Giants for refusing to give him what he wanted.

“I carried a lot of bitterness,” Ishikawa said. “I would show up later than normal. I’d usually be one of the first guys to leave. I felt I was being wronged by the organization, and if they were going to wrong me, I didn’t want to be around them. I’d rather be around my family and spend more time with them. I felt there was more respect coming from them than from here.”

If you watched the Giants advance to the World Series last October, you already know this is not where Ishikawa’s story ends. His home run in Game 5 of the NLCS clinched a pennant, challenged the sound barrier at China Basin and forever gilded his name in Giants lore.

Ishikawa still has almost no memory of his screaming mad buzz around the bases that delirious night. But he is familiar with the concept of circling back home.

After three years and bit parts in four organizations, his improbable comeback with the Giants represented a 180-degree turn in more ways than one. When the club purchased his contract last July, teammates and coaches noticed an immediate difference in his demeanor. There was a lightness about him. He replaced entitlement with enthusiasm. He wasn’t indignant over what he lacked but grateful for what he had — including a full uniform once more.

Clubhouse manager Mike Murphy told Ishikawa that his old No. 10 hadn’t been assigned to anyone but that there was a No. 45 jersey in his size. Ishikawa took what was within reach.

“I told him I didn’t care what number’s on the back,” Ishikawa said. “It says Giants on the front.”

A few weeks later, Ishikawa walked into the clubhouse at Nationals Park and had a flashback to a day in 2010, when he hunched in front of his locker in that same room, called his best friend, Danny Graham, and vented about being a bench guy.

He took out his phone, sat down at the same locker and called his friend again.

“Do you know where I’m at right now?” Ishikawa told Graham. “I’m sitting in the exact same spot where I talked to you four years ago as a member of the Giants complaining to you about being a left-handed hitter off the bench. And I’m just telling you right now that I’m a left-handed pinch hitter for the Giants, coming off the bench, and I couldn’t be happier.”

Actually, no. Ishikawa could be happier. When his home run skipped off the top of the right field arcade, sending the Giants to the World Series, it brought a supernova of joy to a sellout crowd at AT&T Park. Ishikawa became Bobby Thomson for a new generation of Giants fans. He’d forever be family now. And he is back in camp this spring, after the club tendered him a contract worth $1.1 million. It would be a shock if he wears anything but a full uniform to the next ring ceremony.

This winter, Ishikawa could not walk into the gym, fill up the tank or stop for a gallon of milk without being recognized. Some people wanted to shake his hand or ask for an autograph. Mostly, though, they just wanted to say thank you.

Thank you for the home run that lifted a city’s soul.

“Which I find funny,” he said, “because it wasn’t just me. I mean, it’s a team game, right?”