SAN FRANCISCO — Tony Gonzalez will have more on his mind than just his final game at Candlestick Park.

Tonight, the Atlanta Falcons’ veteran tight end will most certainly remember a chance meeting with a man named Mickey Pfleger.

Among the retiring star’s fondest memories of Candlestick Park is something that, at the time 13 years ago, was downright terrifying.

On Nov. 12, 2000, while playing for the Kansas City Chiefs, Gonzalez took a late hit out of bounds and ran into a photographer and knocked him unconscious.

“I remember a play coming toward me rather quickly along the southwest sideline,” wrote Pfleger, who died three years ago. “I remember standing up and starting to move backward to get out of the way, like I always do when a play comes toward me. That’s the last thing I remember until I came to and realize that I am laying on my back looking at paramedics and doctors.”

“His eyes were in the back of his head,” Gonzalez recalled. “He was knocked out, unconscious. I tried to help him up, but people were like, `Hey, get back in the huddle.”’

Gonzalez later saw the ambulance take the man away for further tests at a local hospital. But it wasn’t until three days later that he learned Pfleger’s brain scan had revealed a significant tumor that was cancerous.

Pfleger referred to himself as the “luckiest person in the world” after that, given he would not have known as soon about the cancer had Gonzalez not clobbered him that day.