MLB Wants to Build a Stadium Inside Grand Teton National Park. The White House Says Don't Look at Us.

MLB Wants to Build a Stadium Inside Grand Teton National Park. The White House Says Don't Look at Us.

Major League Baseball wants to build a stadium inside one of America's most protected pieces of land, and the Trump administration is trying very hard to say this isn't its idea.

According to the Washington Post, MLB approached the White House to ask about hosting a game at a national park "similar to the Field of Dreams game" in Dyersville, Iowa. Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming emerged as the target location. The Post reported, citing two sources, that National Park Service Deputy Director Frank Lands visited the park and looked at three potential sites for a from-scratch ballpark.

One of those sites is already disturbed land, used to store broken or unused Park Service equipment, not untouched wilderness. That's the detail the White House keeps pointing to when downplaying the whole thing.

The White House Distances Itself

In a statement to the Post, the White House said flatly: "This is not a Presidential directive, nor is it being directed by the White House. It's also not being driven by the Department of the Interior. Therefore, this is not a White House or Administration priority."

The administration went further, according to Fox News and the Express, disputing that Lands was "actively scouting" sites at all. The White House claimed his Grand Teton trip coincided with visits to other major parks like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, and that "the MLB happened to schedule their trip to Grand Teton at the same time that Frank was there." No permits have been issued. No plan has been finalized. The White House told the Post to direct further questions to MLB.

The two claims don't fully square. Either Lands was evaluating locations for a stadium or he wasn't. Three site visits inside one park is a strange coincidence if nobody was scouting anything.

Why MLB Wants This

An MLB official told the Post the league is exploring a national-park game as one of several ideas to keep generating buzz the way its other standalone events have. The league has played specialty games at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee, and three times at the actual Field of Dreams cornfield in Iowa. Those games have been ratings and attendance hits. From MLB's perspective, a national park game is just the next unique venue in a strategy that's already worked.

The Post noted that with the 2027 schedule already locked, nothing could happen at Grand Teton before 2028 at the earliest, according to the Daily Wire's account of the reporting.

Local and Bipartisan Pushback

The backlash in Wyoming has been swift and comes from officials of both parties. State Sen. Mike Gierau, a Democrat from Jackson, told Cowboy State Daily the idea is "absolutely abhorrent" and compared it to New Coke as a marketing disaster. "If the idea came from Major League Baseball, the person who thought of it should be fired; and the person who hired them should be fired," Gierau said, adding that anyone in the administration who entertained the idea instead of saying no should be fired too.

State Rep. Mike Yin, also a Jackson Democrat, called it "more of a stunt for MLB than anything else" that will backfire if it moves forward. Teton County Commissioner Luther Propst told the Post a ballpark there would be "a radical departure from the tradition of national parks."

Criticism isn't confined to Democrats. Rob Wallace, who served as assistant secretary of the Interior in Trump's first administration and lives in Teton County, said national park land is "the most protected land class of any public lands in the United States" and called the idea "almost undoable." He said he hopes the administration halts the project and noted it's a lot easier to build a diamond in an Iowa cornfield than inside Grand Teton.

Betsy Buffington of the National Parks Conservation Association told the Post the plan is "ludicrous" and "irreplaceable," pointing to the park's bears, wolves, bison, elk and pronghorn. Economist J.C. Bradbury estimated construction costs would exceed the more than $50 million MLB already spent expanding the Field of Dreams site, and argued a one-off game would displace regular tourists in a park where hotels are already booked solid.

MLB has not confirmed Grand Teton as a final choice, and the National Park Service has issued no permits. If this really isn't a White House priority, the question becomes whether the idea quietly dies or MLB keeps pushing until an administration official says yes on the record.