While Doc was at Harvard Medical School he made the acquaintance of Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.) where they roomed at the same boarding house.

In a bit of an interesting twist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. has a tie to baseball as well. According to John Helyar’s classic, “Lords of the Realm,” baseball’s Reserve Clause dated to 1879, when the eight pro teams at the time opted to “reserve” five of their players apiece each year, preventing high salaries and free agency. The arrangement soon drew heated opposition, including in 1915 when owners of the short-lived Federal League brought an anti-trust suit against the National League. The United States Supreme Court unanimously denied the suit in 1922, with Associate Justice Holmes writing in the majority opinion that baseball wasn’t interstate commerce and thus not covered by anti-trust laws. Free agency didn’t come to baseball until the 1970s.