DETROIT (AP) -- Jason Hanson has paid off a debt and gotten a good laugh.
The former Detroit kicking great handed a $25 check to reporter Kyle Meinke on Sunday at Ford Field and shared a true tale involving one of the writers who covers the Lions.
Hanson, with reporters gathered around in the Ford Field press box, read aloud from a letter Meinke mailed him 25 years ago.
Meinke, who penned the note when he was 8, asked Hanson to send him a $25 check to make up for money he cost him in a squares pool after the two-time Pro Bowl kicker missed a 30-yard field goal in the second quarter of a loss to Green Bay in a wild-card game in 1994.
Hanson made the connection that the young boy who wrote him a letter, which he has kept laminated, became a sports writer after reading a story Meinke wrote about Lions long snapper Don Muhlbach.
"The check is the coolest piece of memorabilia I've gotten doing this job," the 33-year-old Meinke said 30 minutes before reporting on the New York Giants-Lions game. "The full circle part of this is blowing my mind right now."
