004_But_Reach_didnt_inherit_a_single_player_from_that_old_Worces

In 1883, Reach built the Phillies team from scratch at Recreation Park in North Philadelphia. Despite starting well, they faced challenges, losing games by large margins. The team struggled, with their manager fired and even being no-hit by a one-armed pitcher named Hugh Daly. The season ended with the Phillies going 17-81, and their pitcher setting a record by personally losing 48 games. But Reach didn't inherit a single player from that old Worcester team. He had to build a roster from nothing, and he had to find somewhere to play. What he found was an old, neglected field in North Philadelphia called Recreation Park, a site that had been used as a Union Army camp during the Civil War, and more recently as a horse market. Weeds everywhere, grandstands falling apart. Reach rebuilt it into a six-dive hundred-seat ballpark essentially from scratch. The Phillies' first-ever National League game came on May 1, 1883, against the Providence Grays. They actually led 3-0 early, before the Grays' Charles Old Hoss Radbourne, who'd go on to win 48 games that season, helped rally his team to a 4-3 win. That was about as good as it got. The Phillies lost games by scores like 29-4 and 28-0. Their manager, a man with the nickname, Death to Flying Things, got fired after losing 13 of the team's first 17 games. Partway through that miserable debut year, they were even no-hit by a Cleveland pitcher named Hugh Daly, who'd lost his left hand in a childhood shooting accident and pitched with a leather pad strapped to the stump. One-armed Daly blanked the Phillies 1-0 that September. One of the stranger footnotes of a season that ended with the club going 17-81, and their own pitcher, John Coleman, personally losing 48 games, a Major League record that still stands today.