When Sam McNabb heard the words coming from Rush Limbaugh's mouth - the hateful, hurtful words about his son Donovan - he flashed back to another devastating night in the early 1980s. It was supposed to be a wonderful time for Sam McNabb's family, the culmination of what he calls "the all-American concept" - he finally was able to buy his wife and two children a house in the leafy Chicago suburbs.
But the house was in a neighborhood where almost everyone else was white, and a black family from the inner city wasn't exactly welcome in Dolton, Ill.
"When we closed on our house, that night of the closing, the neighbors got together," Sam McNabb says. "They broke into the house, vandalized it, knocked holes in the wall, urinated on the carpeting, broke windows, and spray painted on the house."
"Here you are trying to create a better lifestyle for you and your family, you haven't done anything to anybody," he adds. "You work, you try to show your kids how to be self-sustaining and to go to school and get educated and do the things they need to do. And then you get this tremendous setback in your life by people who are uncaring and insensitive and all they can look at is the color of the skin and not the content of your character."
Donovan McNabb, the talented quarterback who'll lead the Philadelphia Eagles into the NFC championship game tonight, was only 6 or 7 years old when that happened, and his father isn't sure how much the memory haunts his son. Sam McNabb knows, however, how much it hurt him when Limbaugh attacked Donovan McNabb on Sept. 28 on ESPN.
In his infamous last words on the network's Sunday NFL Countdown show, Limbaugh said McNabb's success and his stature as one of the NFL's elite players was the creation of the media, who Limbaugh claimed were "very desirous that a black quarterback do well."
McNabb, he added, hasn't "been that good from the get-go," and said that the credit he receives is because of "a little social concern in the NFL."
"There's a little hope invested in McNabb," Limbaugh continued. "And he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he didn't deserve."
The ensuing national firestorm cost Limbaugh his job and could have consumed McNabb's season. Instead, the quarterback's response was measured. He called the remarks "pretty heavy" and "insensitive," and then stayed out of the national debate on race.
That wasn't so easy for his 50-year-old father, now a retired electrical engineer living in a different Chicago suburb. He says the remarks "bothered me probably far more than it bothered him" and that theyupset his wife, Wilma, too.
They've heard worse things of course, and so have their sons. But words and their overtones still sting.
"Words don't hurt as much as physical actions," Sam says. "Yet words can do some damage because they can cause you to reflect, and they can allow you to really understand that we've either stunted our growth or we never, ever had any real growth in the first place."
Sam wanted to believe there had been growth in society. He wanted to believe that his two sons - Donovan, and his older brother Sean - were done with days like the ones they endured in Dolton, where their father says they were "called a lot of names, the old favorite words."
He even wanted to believe the world was past the days when Donovan was a star quarterback at Mt. Carmel High School on the south side of Chicago and college recruiters tried to convince him to switch positions because quarterbacks weren't supposed to be black.
"But when you've already gone through it you try to put it behind you, now all of a sudden, someone who is insensitive and uncaring brings it up," Sam says. "It's in a different form or fashion, but it still remains the same. It's hurtful. It's not necessary."
"I thought we were beyond that at this stage. And to see something of this nature resurface was not a comforting feeling at all. It's ludicrous. It's ridiculous. And for a guy with a platform that he has, to resort to something like that, we just have to ask ourselves, 'what was really his motive?' Then we have to look at the people that continue to support this man. It tells me that it's not only him that has that problem, but there are millions of others out there that have the same problem. He was just the one that said it."
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By the time he was four years old, Donovan McNabb was entertaining his father by matching the moves of his favorite NBA stars with a miniature basketball inside their Chicago apartment. Sam watched him then and thought "Wow, this kid is a natural."
A few years later, Sam was sure he had a sports prodigy on his hands, when Donovan took up baseball and began freezing his fellow seventh graders with his curveball. By the time he was in eighth grade, Sam says, Donovan's fastball approached 90 miles per hour, and he was forced to bring his birth certificate to tournament games because opponents constantly questioned his age.
But Donovan's remarkable athletic ability never seemed to be enough. Even after he proved his ability with an All-American career at Syracuse, there were still questions about whether he'd be a good enough quarterback in the pros. Eagles fans didn't even want him - they wanted running back Ricky Williams - and they booed when the Eagles took McNabb with the second pick in the 1999 draft.
"That shocked him more than anything else," Sam says. "This was the biggest day of his life, something that he worked extremely hard for. Once that day came, those that didn't understand, they just cheapened it by responding the way they did.
"I wonder what would've happened if they had gotten what they wanted. They would've probably run (Williams) out of town the first game."
It didn't Philadelphia long to embrace Sam's son. He won the city over with his talent, his personality and his ability to handle adversity. Now he gets standing ovations and is one of the most popular athletes in a notoriously fickle city.
That's why the Eagles were so shocked when Limbaugh took him on.
"I wondered why people take a shot at him," says Eagles tight end Chad Lewis. "He is so consistent in treating people with such class and respect. Usually people go after someone that doesn't have those characteristics and qualities."
McNabb's ability alone should have shielded him from the attack. He is so good that Giants GM Ernie Accorsi once compared him to former Cowboys great Roger Staubach.
In five NFL seasons, he's completed 57% of his passes, thrown for more than 13,000 yards and run for more than 2,200. And he was never better than last Sunday, when he led the Eagles to a come-from-behind overtime win over the Packers, passing for 248 yards, rushing for 107, and saving the Eagles' season by completing a miracle 4th-and-26 pass.
Of course when Limbaugh attacked, McNabb was an easy target. He was playing with a badly bruised right thumb, and he had completed just 37 of 82 passes (45.1%) with no touchdowns and three interceptions. The Eagles, everybody's NFC East favorite, were a surprising 0-2.
They Eagles have gone 13-2 since.
"I'm not sure if (Limbaugh) motivated him, but I think that definitely played a big part in (his season)," Eagles receiver James Thrash says. "It doesn't matter what people say about you, as long as he knows the guys in here have trust in him and are going to do everything they can to help him win. That's been very important to him this whole year."
Sam still marvels at Donovan's remarkable composure. He wanted so badly to fire back at Limbaugh and defend his youngest son. And he wanted to lash out at the people who continued to give Limbaugh and his hateful opinions an undeserved spotlight on a national stage.
But Donovan managed to shrug off the controversy. "I'm extremely proud of him," Sam says. "I think what he also did was he showed people the real class of character that he has as a young African-American, and more especially a man."