CLEARWATER, Fla. — The Philadelphia Phillies had a rally going here on Friday: a home run, a single, an error, another single. A voice from the crowd chirped, “Everybody hits!” — a callback to the old days at Veterans Stadium, when one fan would punctuate hot hitting with those words and yelp “Hoo-hoo!” in delight.

Harry Kalas mentioned this happy little sound bite in a poem to the fans in Cooperstown, N.Y., in 2002, when he won an award for broadcasting excellence. Matt Stairs, the Phillies’ hitting coach, knows all about Kalas. He hit the last home run Kalas ever called, a pinch-hit game-winner in April 2009, the day before Kalas died. Stairs retired two years later. He spent the last three seasons as a Phillies broadcaster.

Television, though, was not his calling. Stairs was meant to launch baseballs into orbit with maximum force — and now, at 49, to teach others to do so. He regards pitchers the way Kalas’s favorite broadcast partner, the Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn, did on air: as an enemy easily dismissed.

“Don’t give respect to the pitchers,” Stairs said. “They don’t respect hitters, so why respect pitchers? When you’re facing a Max Scherzer, you don’t say, ‘Oh, it’s Max Scherzer today’ — well, then you’re beaten already, because you’ve got negative thoughts. I just want the positive energy. I’m a very positive guy. I want guys to be upbeat.”