He Stayed True to Red, White and Blue

There are giant letters stripped across the rib joint’s marquee.

“LA Clippers Rule The City Of Los Angeles”

There is a large red, white and blue No. 54 jersey hanging in the rib joint’s foyer.

“Hey, Chris Wilcox could play,” Robin Salzer says.

There is a huge TV in the corner of the rib joint’s lounge, and on basketball nights it becomes the most unusual TV in town.

“You know how Burger King says you can have it your way?” Salzer asks. “Well, this ain’t Burger King. We do it my way. And my way is, this TV is always tuned to the Clippers.”

For 21 years it has been his way, the Clipper way, the wrong way.

For 21 years, this original Clipper season-ticket holder has lived basketball’s longest running heartbreak, pining for a future that didn’t exist, loving someone who rarely loved him back.

For 21 years, the two season tickets have led to rejection, humiliation, disillusionment, even burglary.

And in about 21 minutes, none of it will matter, because Robin Salzer, and thousands of dreamers like him, are going to the playoffs.

“I remember once trying to scalp my Clipper tickets for money to buy dinner at the Pantry,” he says. “I couldn’t even make enough to eat.”

And now, the owner of Robin’s Wood Fire BBQ & Grill in Pasadena is in ball hog heaven.

With four games left, his team’s 45 wins equal the team’s highest total since it arrived here from San Diego for the 1984-’85 season.

With a possible first-round matchup and home-court advantage against the Denver Nuggets, his team could also win a playoff series for the first time since coming here.

Those tickets that Salzer couldn’t give away, often attending games by himself with his popcorn and soda occupying in his empty seat?

His employees now offer to wash his car or work double shifts for them.

And the woman who, upon seeing those tickets several years ago, refused a first date request because she hated the Clippers?

Well, Anne-Marie Villicana has since married him and will be attending the playoff games in place of that popcorn and soda.

It has taken 21 years, but the frog is finally feeling like a prince, and we don’t mean Tayshaun.

“People always told me I was nuts, but I always believed it had to get better, Donald Sterling had to wise up, it couldn’t get any worse,” Salzer says. “And now look. There’s a feeling in town like, as they go farther and farther, this could be turning into a Clipper Nation.”

OK, so maybe not a nation. Maybe it’s not even a neighborhood. Maybe you can still count the number of true longtime Clipper believers on one block.

But that block, those sufferers, that’s what this spring is about.

It’s not about Mike Dunleavy’s toughness or Elton Brand’s grace or Sam Cassell’s perseverance.

It’s about all those attributes belonging to those who watch them.

This is about Robin Salzer’s toughness -- do you know his car was broken into three times in the Sports Arena parking lot? Or that he once fought three hours of traffic to arrive at the game at halftime, then left less than an hour later when they were blown out again?

More horrifying than all that, he sat through the entire Clipper career of Benoit Benjamin. “Benoit was bad,” Salzer says with a veteran wince. “But Michael Olowokandi was worse.”

This is also about Robin Salzer’s grace.

He remembers walking through his restaurant bar during busy nights when he couldn’t miss work, holding up his tickets, asking if anybody wanted them free, always hearing the same four words.

Who are they playing?

“I literally could not give the tickets away,” he says.

Many nights, he attended games by himself. One night, he got the bright idea to sell them through a broker.

“The guy laughed at me,” he says. “I’ll never forget that laugh.”

This is, finally, about Robin Salzer’s perseverance.

He has seen games implode, careers end, coaches fired, Greg Kite crash, Joe Wolf howl, Doc Rivers dry up.

Salzer has been at a game so bad, Sterling stomped away from his midcourt seat in the middle of the fourth quarter.

Salzer has been at a game so frustrating, the shirt-shooting pep squad fired one right in his lap, but there was a cast on his wrist, so he dropped it.

“Through the ups and downs of my business, people wondered why I kept the tickets,” he says. “And I often thought, did I really need them?”

Turns out, like most longtime Clipper fans, he did.

A Milwaukee transplant, Salzer, 51, is a basketball junkie who still keeps balls in his truck and a permanent goal in the parking lot behind his restaurant.

His first year in town, he bought Laker tickets, and hated the seats and the atmosphere.

The next year, the Clippers showed up, he bought better seats for half the price, he was surrounded by fans who came only for the basketball and not the buzz, and he was hooked.

“Laker fans are cocktails at the Ritz Carlton,” he says. “Clipper fans are beers at Moose McGillycuddy’s.”

Twenty-one years later, that beer tastes like champagne, and this town’s new princes are singing.

“We can win more than one round, why not?” Salzer says while sitting in his restaurant Thursday afternoon, employees and customers within earshot. “Duncan isn’t the same for San Antonio, Dallas isn’t a lock, we could ....”

Twenty-one years later, everybody listens, nobody laughs, and they now stay snugly in his back pocket, two tickets to paradise.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous Plaschke columns, go to latimes.com/plaschke.