Ralph Lawler is Clippers’ MVP, this season and every season

“Blake gets his first field goal in the second half. Don’t go away, 89-77, it’s down to 12. Don’t go away!”

It’s Ralph Lawler’s 2,513th Clippers game here and in San Diego, of which 1,613 have been losses, not that you can tell by his excitement level.

Blake Griffin has just scored as they try to rally from a 16-point deficit in a game against the San Antonio Spurs, as Richard Jefferson fires off a three-pointer. . . .

“Jefferson!” says Lawler as the ball arcs toward the basket, and goes in.

“Go ahead and go away.”

Welcome to Ralph’s world, where a sense of humor and a healthy outlook are all that stand between you and a career as gloomy as Clippers tradition.

Happily for Clippers fans, who are out there somewhere even if they’re hiding under rocks, Lawler has both.

Losses come and losses go. Indeed, Clippers come and Clippers go — general managers, presidents, publicists, arenas, cities — but one is eternal.

No, it’s not owner Donald T. Sterling, influential as he has been.

It’s Lawler, The Noblest Clipper, who called the team’s first three seasons in San Diego before 1981 when The Donald bought it . . . and dumped him.

Actually, it was a station switch that meant Jerry Gross would call Sterling’s first season . . . all 17 wins and 65 losses of it.

It’s not known whether Gross ran off screaming, but the job quickly reopened.

“The following summer, I run into Donald Sterling on a beach in Del Mar,” Lawler says, “and he says, ‘Why don’t you work for us anymore?

“[Laughing] And I said, ‘Because they didn’t hire me.’

“He said, ‘Well, you’ve got to come back.’

“And I said, ‘OK.’

“And so I did.”

And so he has, for 28 years of telling it like it is . . . however horrific it was . . . in rollicking partnerships like the current one with lighthearted, incisive Michael Smith.

The all-timer was Ralph and Bill Walton, whose old stuttering problem seemed to preclude anything like this, 13 seasons of sardonic hilarity with a little play-by-play thrown in.

It was definitely the way to go as losses mounted and they could feel the audience dwindle from six figures to five, four. . . .

“The losses might have bothered me when I was younger,” Lawler says, “but I love to broadcast.

“I did a radio gig coming in [for last week’s game against the Lakers] and some guy said, ‘You must be excited for this game.’

“I’m excited for every game. I’m excited for a preseason game.”

Unfortunately, as professional and as carefully prepared as Lawler is, some things come out of the blue.

Having called 26 seasons’ of worth of games consecutively, Lawler was suspended by Fox Sports along with Smith in 2009 after an outcry at Smith’s expression of surprise at seeing an Iranian on the Memphis roster — Hamed Haddadi, the nation’s first NBA player — in which Smith made a joke in poor taste about Borat and both announcers mispronounced it Eye-ran.

That was another kind of joke, the arch-politically-correct, throw-them-under-the-bus kind.

If recognition comes slowly or not at all at these depths, doing it with style, wit and dignity as Lawler has puts him among the greats in his profession

Around here where the norm is Broadcast Icon, Ralph is as important to Clipper Nation as Chick Hearn was to Lakerdom and Vin Scully is for Dodger Blue.

Chick and Vin just chronicled star-spangled rocket rides. Ralph got a 28-year tour of the underworld.

A year ago Walton recommended his old partner as “the surefire winner of this year’s Curt Gowdy Award,” the Hall of Fame’s top honor for broadcasters.

In a letter that could only have come from one man, Walton wrote:

“I joined the San Diego Clippers in 1979. . . . The rest is history as my career disintegrated and Ralph’s Blossomed. . . . A chance encounter at the local convenience store on the beach in San Diego. . . forever changed my life. I was a dazed and confused ex-athlete. . . . When I stumbled up behind Ralph in the checkout line, I could not have been a more pathetic or pitiful figure. . . . Ralph guided me step by step towards a new life and an unheard-of career in broadcasting. . . . If he doesn’t qualify for enshrinement here at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame right now, then we should all act forthrightly to disband this association and affiliation immediately. . . .

“Bill Walton

Hall of Fame, 1993”

Unfortunately, Lawler didn’t win.

Fortunately, the hall didn’t disband and it’s a new season.

Happily, it matters only up to a point.

Lawler took a 50% pay cut from the $50,000 he made as sports anchor at Philadelphia’s CBS affiliate but says, “I knew it was the last job I ever wanted as long as I lived.

“I’ve loved every single night of it, I really have.”

At 72, with his wife, Jo, driving in from La Quinta at home and flying with him on the charter, Lawler would love 29 more seasons, just as good.

That’s the big award, A Life.

mark.heisler@latimes.com