MLB Weighs Grand Teton National Park as Site for Regular-Season Game
The short version
- MLB proposed a regular-season game in a national park to the Trump administration, per The Washington Post.
- NPS Deputy Director Frank Lands reviewed three potential sites at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.
- No site has been chosen, no permits granted and no construction or environmental plan made public.
- Grand Teton's rules restrict special events, and conservation groups have objected to the plan.
- MLB's 2027 special-event schedule is full; 2028 is the earliest a game could be played.
The Washington Post reports that MLB pitched the idea to the Trump administration and that three Wyoming sites have been scouted, but nothing has been approved.
A proposal from Major League Baseball to hold a regular-season contest within a national park has been put before the Trump administration, The Washington Post reported. Frank Lands, deputy director of the National Park Service, recently made a trip to Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming to look over three areas that might host a temporary ballpark erected for the occasion. The concept is in its earliest phase: no venue has been chosen and no permit has been granted.
In a statement to the newspaper, the White House said the concept came from the league itself rather than the government, and stressed that it is neither an order from President Donald Trump nor an initiative being driven by his administration.
In recent years, MLB has regularly added unusual settings to its calendar. Games have been played abroad in England, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Mexico, and domestically at the 'Field of Dreams' site in Iowa — a diamond set in a cornfield — as well as at Rickwood Field and Bristol Motor Speedway, where a temporary playing surface was laid inside the stock-car oval.
Grand Teton would be a far heavier lift. Tens of thousands of fans would descend on the park for a single game, an operation demanding far more than a diamond: accommodations for spectators and players, space for broadcast crews, security, sanitation and emergency medical services — all of it put up and taken down around one event. Moving that many people to a remote site, and back out again, adds its own complications.
Park regulations may prove the steepest barrier. Grand Teton bars special events that disrupt the flow of visitors, wildlife or traffic; shutting roads or trails is not permitted; and designated wilderness areas are off limits. Advertising logos, banners and structures akin to tents are banned as well.
According to the Post's account, at least one of the three locations Lands reviewed consists of ground that has already been disturbed — land now used for storage — rather than untouched terrain within the park.
Conservation groups have voiced objections anyway, citing the potential environmental toll of a major pro sports event taking place on national park land, and the precedent that such an event would create.
No construction plan or environmental review has been made public, which leaves unanswered the question of how the league could satisfy the park's protective requirements while still mounting a game there.
For fans tracking broadcast schedules and travel plans, the timeline matters most. MLB's special-event slate for 2027 is already complete, so no Grand Teton game could appear before the 2028 season. No announcement about any national park game has been made, and even that date assumes approvals that do not yet exist.
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