LOS ANGELES – It is hard to believe, just looking at him and listening to him, that Matt Stairs could love a sport more than baseball. It has been his life for 20 years. It has made his family wealthy. It has given him the opportunity to hit a playoff home run that will guarantee, if nothing else, free beers forever within the 215, 610, 856 and 609 area codes.

But his passion is not baseball. It is hockey. As his friend, Gene Fadrigon, said Tuesday, “It’s true. I’ve really heard him say it, that he would have given it all up to play one game with the Montreal Canadiens.”

Fadrigon is the hockey coach at John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, Maine. He and Stairs have been assistants on the staff there for the last three years, before Fadrigon assumed the head-coaching job. The text messages that filled Stairs’ phone Tuesday included many from kids on the team.

It also included one from Fadrigon, who sheepishly had to admit to Stairs, “I fell asleep at 11:15 and missed it.”

The two-run home run that Stairs hit to win Game 4 of the National League Championship Series for the Phillies was still reverberating in Dodger Stadium Tuesday, hours after it screamed into the rightfield pavilion.

Reporters again surrounded him, the sudden hero with the thinning hair and the wild, winning stroke. I mean, how could you possibly not like a guy who plainly admits, “(My approach) is to swing it as hard as I can. My goal is to make it to the batter’s box and see how far I can hit a ball.”

It is a great story – 40 years old, acquired at the trade deadline from Toronto in a ho-hum kind of a move. Now, this. With the Phillies ahead of the Dodgers by three games to one in the NLCS, there is a decent chance the story isn’t over, either. The folks in Bangor know Stairs might be a little late for practice.

“You should see him with the players,” Fadrigon said. “He’s such a big asset for us. He can demonstrate things. He can play the game. He’s knowledgeable and the kids pay attention to him. I mean, he’s a star.

“But that’s the thing – he’s unbelievably down-to-earth, too. He doesn’t want any attention up here. He’s fun to be around – got a lot of funny stories. He relates really well, doesn’t put on airs at all, not with the parents or the kids.

“He’s just a regular guy,” he said.

Growing up in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Stairs said that baseball and hockey were not close for him. “Baseball was so far secondary,” he said. “I played about 10 games a year in baseball and hockey was a nine-month sport.”

What position?

“Everywhere.”

Goalie?

“I’m not that stupid.”

In a game against a traveling team from Russia in the early 1980s, Stairs leveled one of the Russian kids and received an ovation from the crowd. (By the way, you’ve got to love a guy who has stories that predate the fall of the Berlin Wall.)

Anyway, hockey was going to be it for Stairs until a major knee injury ended his playing career. He kind of fell into baseball after that – and that’s just how he explains it. Now, he never wants to leave. He is actively preparing for life as a manager or hitting coach.

“I ask questions,” he said. “I talked to Jimy (bench coach Jimy Williams) Tuesday, asked him a couple of questions. I think that’s how you learn. You learn from the game – and God knows you can’t figure it all the time. There are situations, guys pinch-hit – I just try to be alert and pay attention. And I enjoy the game ..

“I’ve been around the game for so long, for 20 years. I want to give back to the game. You talk to Jamie Moyer, he’s been around so long, you just don’t want to walk away from the game. The game’s been very good. My family enjoys it. I enjoy being around the ballpark and helping people out. Why wouldn’t I want to work toward managing when I retire?”

He is humorous, self-effacing, noting at one point that he isn’t the kind of ballplayer who sits in front of the mirror all day fussing with his hair. He so clearly loves this, the whole thing. But it’s funny. He said it was fun talking to his wife and two of his daughters about it – they’re on the trip with him, the trip of a lifetime – but he hasn’t seen a highlight of the home run on TV or read a newspaper story.

“That’s the way I’ve always done it,” Matt Stairs said. “You can’t live in the past.”