Babe Ruth war, Barrow had many holes in the Red Sox lineup to fill. Ruth also noticed these vacancies in the lineup; he was dissatisfied in the role of a pitcher who appeared every four or five days and wanted to play every day at another position. Barrow used Ruth at first base and in the outfield during the exhibition season, but he restricted him to pitching as the team moved towards Boston and the season opener. At the time, Ruth was possibly the best left-handed pitcher in baseball, and allowing him to play another position was an experiment that could have
Babe Ruth of the significant social changes that marked the early 1920s. In his history of the Yankees, Glenn Stout noted that "Ruth was New York incarnate—uncouth and raw, flamboyant and flashy, oversized, out of scale, and absolutely unstoppable". During his lifetime, Ruth had become a symbol of the United States. During World War II, Japanese soldiers could think of no greater insult than to yell in English, "To hell with Babe Ruth", to anger American soldiers. Ruth replied that he hoped that "every Jap that mention[ed] my name gets shot". Creamer recorded that "Babe Ruth transcended sport and moved far beyond