Even if you aren’t a sports fan, the surviving members of the Mount Airy Graniteers minor-league baseball team are pieces of living history.

With just seven players remaining, the annual Graniteers reunion, which took place Sunday at the Dr. Robert Smith House, is becoming an even more special and exclusive event.

Former Mount Airy commissioner and avid baseball enthusiast David Beal, along with help from others, began the reunion 10 years ago to honor and help continue the memory of an important part of Granite City lore.

Beal, who worked with the Winston-Salem Warthogs for a number of years, said the reason for the reunion is simple — the legends of Mount Airy athletics are as important to the identity of the town as any other recognizable feature.

“It’s history,” he said. “That’s all you can say. We are in the 125th anniversary of the town and, yes, textiles and furniture and tobacco and the granite quarry and all of these things that go into our history are important, but there is strong evidence we were heavily involved in all kinds of sports all through our history.”

Just to take a few minutes to listen to the Graniteers tell stories from a by-gone era is a lesson in real baseball and the essence of Americana.

From Francis Essic marrying his wife at homeplate as to not miss a game to Frank “Moose” Solters and his introduction to mountain colloquialisms, an afternoon with the gentlemen of the Graniteers is one to remember.

While many small towns throughout the country had minor league teams during a period prior to the Major League farm system now in place, which spanned from the 1930s into the early 1950s, it seems the Graniteers were something special.

While most players who came to town to play for the team were from somewhere else, many stayed on, finding pretty mountain girls and families in the process.

All of the men who stayed in the area claimed it was the best move of their lives and said the support they received from the community as players only helped to paint Mount Airy as a small town with a big heart.

Many modern women and those from days past would balk at the thought of a wedding on a baseball diamond. The story surrounding Essic and his marriage at home plate doesn’t involve convincing his bride-to-be of the arrangement, but rather a discerning soon to be mother-in-law.

“It wasn’t her, it was her mother we had to convince,” Essic said with a laugh. “When I told our manager Chubby Dean I wanted an extra day off during a break in the season he said, ‘Why?’ and I told him so I could get married, and he said ‘Why don’t you just get married at home plate and you won’t need an extra game?’ and I thought her mother would never agree to that, but she did.”

And for Essic, the rest is history.

For Solters, a pitcher who made his way to Mount Airy after a try at the upper leagues early in his career, a night in Galax, Va., was his introduction to the south and its specialized languages.

Many of the fields on which the Graniteers played were close confines, with the chatter of the crowd easily heard on the diamond.

One evening when Solters was on the mound, he overheard a phrase used which to his ears was as foreign as a French soliloquy.

“We were playing and this guy came in late and he asked another one ‘What’s the score?’ and the guy said ‘Nary ‘un to nary ‘un,’” Solters said. “I turned back and looked at the scoreboard and it said zero-to-zero and I said ‘What in the heck is ‘nary ‘un to nary ‘un?’”

While the crowd is getting smaller at each year’s reunion, Anne Vaughn, executive director of the Gilmer-Smith Foundation, which sponsored Sunday’s event, said as long as there can be a Graniteers reunion, there will be a Graniteers reunion to keep an important part of Mount Airy’s past alive in spirit and memory.

“As we’ve been saying in years past as long as there is a Graniteer living and as long as they want to get together, we will have a reunion for them,” Vaughn said. “They are very special people. They have a bond and a camaraderie that you can’t explain.”

Contact Thomas Smith at tsmith@mtairynews.com or 719-1920.