by Ian O'Connor

Comment

He has spilled the blood, sweat and tears of a thousand Big 5 players at the Palestra. He has suffered the indignities of an entire neighborhood of civic-minded families that tried attending games at the Vet.

Philadelphia is famous for booing Santa?

Even Santa booed McNabb on draft day.

A prominent NBA coach once told me Philadelphia, Boston and New York represented their own unforgiving nation, "and every other market is Club Med in comparison."

I told him that grouping Philadelphia with Boston and New York was like throwing Genghis Khan into the same cell with two guys busted for jaywalking.

Way back when, the Soviets' Big Red Machine of a hockey team wasn't frightened off the ice at Boston Garden or Madison Square Garden in the heat of the Cold War. That was an only-in-Philly phenomenon.

The same goes for McNabb, the Rocky Balboa of $100 million NFL quarterbacks.

"They've thrown me out, they ran over me, spit on me," McNabb said recently of his detractors. "But you know what? ... I just continue to prevail."

Prevail? The Phillies just won the first major sports championship in that city since the Sixers claimed the NBA crown in 1983, and yet in the early hours of 2009, McNabb still has a chance to go down as the enduring Philly story of 2008.

Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, Brad Lidge — they weren't around when McNabb was the second player chosen in the '99 draft, when Cleveland celebrated the immortal Tim Couch like a returning war hero before McNabb was jeered by a fan base that wanted Ricky Williams instead.

The Phillies absorbed their fair share of abuse on their way to a parade — even in good times, Philly crowds best match up with the torch-carrying mobs from those old Bela Lugosi films. In fact, Philadelphia fields the only teams in sports that try to score early to take their own fans out of the game.

But nobody's had more line drives smacked at him than McNabb, whose 10 years in Philly are the equivalent of 20 anywhere else.

"We're human beings and you get tired of it," McNabb said. "But you never let them see you sweat."

On Sunday, McNabb will lead the Eagles into Giants Stadium for a playoff game with the top-seeded defending champs. He's the only quarterback to beat the Giants on their own field this season, and nobody will be terribly surprised if he makes it two for the road.

But to understand where McNabb is, you have to understand where he's been. To hell and back? Not quite.

At times it just seemed that way.

As a prospect out of the South Side of Chicago, McNabb was offered two Division I scholarships to play quarterback. Two. Syracuse and Nebraska were willing to let him keep his position, while dozens of other big-time schools wanted McNabb as a receiver, a running back, or a safety.

McNabb was interested in Illinois. But the Illinois coach, Lou Tepper, informed McNabb's coach at Mount Carmel High that his Illini assistant, Greg Landry, didn't want young Donovan as a quarterback. This would be the same Landry who in 15 NFL seasons threw for 13,000 fewer yards and nearly 100 fewer touchdowns than McNabb would manage in his first 10.

"That's a situation Donovan's been facing since grade school," his Mount Carmel predecessor, Mike McGrew, once told me. "The doubts and questions we face as black quarterbacks."

Doug Williams couldn't destroy all the wretched stereotypes in one Super Bowl. So if McNabb has come across as overly sensitive, he has his reasons. He's been blitzed by all comers.

A white commentator, Rush Limbaugh, actually called him the creation of a white media base that was "very desirous" of seeing a black quarterback succeed. A black commentator, J. Whyatt Mondesire, the head of the Philadelphia branch of the NAACP, actually wrote in his newspaper that McNabb was a "mediocre at best" quarterback who was "trying to disguise that fact behind some concocted reasoning that African-American quarterbacks who can scramble and who can run the ball are somehow lesser field generals..."

In effect, McNabb was called a pocket-passing sellout by an NAACP official in his own market.

No, Philadelphia has never led the league in constructive criticism.

Doug Williams opened the door a little wider for black quarterbacks by winning a Super Bowl. (Stephen Dunn / Getty Images)

McNabb was cast in the role of choker for reaching his fourth consecutive NFC title game before finally winning one. He threw for 357 yards and three touchdowns in a Super Bowl loss to the Brady/Belichick Patriots and yet is best remembered for the interceptions, the sacks and the alleged dehydration/exhaustion/nausea that did or didn't get the best of him down the stretch.

Terrell Owens was McNabb's worst nightmare even before stating that Brett Favre was the superior quarterback. Jeff Garcia nearly replaced McNabb, and Kevin Kolb was drafted to unseat him.

This year, McNabb was McNailed nationally for revealing he didn't know regular-season games could end in a tie. He was benched by Andy Reid, then reinstated only because the anointed Kolb was dreadful in relief.

The Eagles weren't going to give McNabb the extension he wanted on the $115 million contract he signed in 2002. They were going to drive him to the airport and have him play quarterback for somebody else.

Only something funny happened on the way to divorce court. McNabb beat the Cardinals, Giants and Browns, ripped the Cowboys in a win-or-else game and threw for 300 yards in a wild-card playoff victory over the Vikings.

He's won five of six games in all and thrown for 10 touchdowns against two interceptions in the process.

"I've been kind of revived, I guess," McNabb said.

This year's Eagles are suddenly last year's Giants — a white-hot wild card scaring all the top seeds straight. McNabb is suddenly the same quarterback who completed that fourth-and-26 playoff pass to Freddie Mitchell to beat Favre's Packers in his greatest NFL moment.

Can he lead the Eagles to their first championship since 1960? Maybe, maybe not.

Either way, McNabb has proven himself every bit as tough as the town that's tested him for 10 years. He at least deserves an engraved watch for that.