reserve clause that was exempt. To the contrary, the Court's articulation of the exemption was always phrased as the business of baseball, never as simply the reserve clause." Hinkle read Flood as establishing that it was up to Congress to modify or repeal baseball's antitrust exemption, rather than defining the scope of that exemption: Alston and Nostalgic Partners In 2021 the Supreme Court ruled in National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston that the petitioner did not have the same antitrust exemption as baseball. Justice Neil Gorsuch disparaged that exemption in his opinion for a unanimous Court: That passage set off speculation that the next time the baseball exemption, almost a century old, came before the Court, it might be ready to finally overrule Federal Baseball. Baseball America noted that the opinion also took the unusual step of citing, inline, the amicus curiae brief filed by Advocates for Minor Leaguers, which has sought to have the antitrust exemption overturned. "I think that today's opinion signals that the current composition of the Supreme Court has a significant skepticism about baseball's antitrust exemption", said Harry Marino, director of that organization. "I read their segment of the opinion about the antitrust opinion as an invitation to litigants to raise the issue in front of the court". The case that has been seen as possibly giving the Court that opportunity was already in the courts. As a result of the Minor League Baseball consolidation plan, the Staten Island Yankees' ownership group, Nostalgic Partners, decided late in 2020 that they had no choice but to fold the team after the parent New York Yankees revoked their affiliation with the club. They were not the only minor league team so affected. Since they had bought the club's majority interest 10 years earlier under the promise that the major-league Yankees, who owned a 5 percent stake, would retain that affiliation in perpetuity, Nostalgic brought suit in state court for breach of contract, promissory estoppel and tortious interference. MLB and its commissioner's office were also named as defendants. A month later the Tri-City ValleyCats, based in the upstate city of Troy, who had moved to the independent Frontier League after their MLB parent, the Houston Astros, similarly ended their affiliation, filed a similar suit. Later in 2021 the court dismissed most, but not all, of both teams' claims. The ValleyCats lost on breach of contract, since their agreement with