A logging accident almost cost Lentz his leg. His battle back to competition form has been nothing short of heroic.

I have a confession: I'm a sports junkie. I have been all my life, keeping track of all the scores, the rules and, most of all, the players.

Like most sport junkies I have heroes. Guys like "Stan the Man" and Bob Gibson and today's normal superstars like Michael Jordan and Big Mac. But for the past 15 years I've been following closely an obscure sport that has produced one of my greatest sporting heroes.

That sport is lumberjack competitions. It is gaining popularity, but it remains obscure by today's sport standards.

I should say that I was there when lumberjack competitions got off the ground. Since it began airing on ESPN I've watched it become a favorite of millions of viewers. I hate to admit it, but there are lots of people out there who have not seen my smiling face on The Fishin' Hole, which has been on the air for 39 years. But there are very few who have not watched "TimberSports" at least once.

Why wouldn't you watch? We're talking about giant men with axes and chainsaws competing against each other.

It's certainly a compelling sport, one where there is a legitimate hero in the lumberjack world.

His name is Mel Lentz. And he is my hero, on the same list with all those other more recognizable names.

An early champion

I remember seeing Lentz for the first time back in the early 1980s in Hayward, Wisc. The lumberjack event was billed as the Super Bowl of the sport and I was watching all the favorites compete. I was surprised when a 25-year-old chopper/sawer from Oregon slipped in the back door and became the champion.

From that moment on Mel Lentz never fooled anyone, including me, again. He began to win two out of the three stops we covered for television and he quickly became the unofficial world champion.

Mel Lentz had the perfect build for a linebacker, a power forward or first baseman, but he was a lumberjack, and remains the most intense competitor I have ever been around.

If he was getting ready to compete or had just suffered a rare defeat, I didn't want to be in the same county, let alone attempt an interview.

One time, in Webster Springs, West Virginia, after he had just won the overall championship, I was able to interview Lentz.

I was amazed at how big and strong he was. He stands about 6-foot-4 and weighs in at 230 pounds. From a distance, watching him compete, I thought he was just an ordinary man. Then I shook his hand. You have to understand we are talking about a man who can chop through a 16-inch log in 15 seconds. Any first impressions were wiped away with his massive handshake.

During the interview I asked him a lot of questions regarding his sport, and I remember getting a reaction when I told him the best baseball players make $10 million a year, while he had just picked up $1,000 for his weekend efforts.

The dollar signs were attractive to him. He's no dummy. But he was doing what his father had taught him, and would continue as long as he could. He loved lumberjack competition.

The main categories in the sport are chopping and sawing with a homemade crosscut saw. You can only imagine the strength, stamina and coordination it takes to excel. Seven years ago Lentz was still the best, although he was being pushed.

At the time, I was in awe of his talent and enthusiasm, but he was not my hero yet.

A turning point

That status would come when Mel Lentz's life experienced a major turn. It was winter when I received a call telling me of a very traumatic accident involving Lentz while he was logging in the West Virginia woods.

I was able to talk to him by phone from the hospital, and he told me the gruesome story.

While he was loading giant logs in the back of a truck the load shifted, pinning him against the logs and ramming a stake completely through his upper leg. His brother couldn't move the truck and had to leave him hanging on the stake while he ran back to town for help.

It took four hours for help to arrive.

We didn't talk too long because he was unable to. But the life-or-death threat was past and now the decision of amputation had to be made.

I thought a lot about Mel Lentz suffering in the back of that truck. I wondered what kind of a man it took to go through that, and now there was talk of him losing his leg.

Well, he didn't lose his leg. He began putting his life back together and after a couple of years was walking without a crutch. And, believe it or not, his rehab got him back to competing again in arguably one of the toughest sports on earth.

The comeback

Five years ago I watched him compete in his first event since the accident. Every competitor stopped and watched in complete amazement as he made his first chop. He limped, his power was gone, his timing stunk, and he lost badly.

Although the ovation from everyone was awesome, you could see the disappointment in his eyes. The hill he had climbed meant nothing to him because he was not at the top yet.

What a fierce competitor!

At the season's end, he had worked himself up to being a mediocre lumberjack — totally unacceptable to him, although everyone else couldn't believe he was walking.

Fast forward to last year and Mel Lentz is a factor again. He's not the champion yet, but he's there. The competitors from Australia and New Zealand have changed everything and, lets face it, Lentz still limps and is nearing 40. Still, every time he competes he stops and wonders what he has to do to improve.

In June, I went to the first Stihl TimberSports event I had been to in a couple of years. I was there to see one person in particular. This was the first event of the year, and for me everything was in order when I saw Mel Lentz standing under the competitor's tent.

I tried not to buckle at the knees when we shook hands, and I immediately saw the old Mel Lentz — the competitor — when I asked him how it was going.

"I'm faring pretty well," he said. "But they want to operate on my rotary cuff next week, and I'm trying to put it off one more year. After all I made it through last year like this. Maybe I can make it another season."

Since then, all I can think about is this: that Mel Lentz is the toughest, finest athlete in the world that no one knows about.

Watch for him in ESPN's Great Outdoor Games. I can guarantee he'll be there. He's my hero.