MLB’s next ballpark could be in a national park

Major League Baseball has played games in a cornfield, a NASCAR speedway and historic ballparks. Now, the league is apparently wondering whether it can add a national park to the list.

MLB approached the Trump administration about holding a regular-season game in a national park, and National Park Service Deputy Director Frank Lands recently visited Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming to examine three potential locations for a temporary baseball facility, The Washington Post reported.

The idea remains preliminary. No site has been selected and no permits have been issued. The White House stressed that MLB — not President Donald Trump or his administration — proposed the concept.

“This is not a Presidential directive, nor is it being directed by the White House,” the White House told the Post.

For MLB, playing somewhere unexpected has increasingly become part of the schedule. In addition to international games in England, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Mexico, the league has staged games at Iowa’s “Field of Dreams” site, historic Rickwood Field and Bristol Motor Speedway, where a temporary baseball field was constructed inside the NASCAR track.

Turning Grand Teton into the next destination could be considerably more complicated.

Hosting tens of thousands of baseball fans inside a national park could require substantial temporary infrastructure beyond the field itself, including facilities for spectators and players, broadcast crews, security, sanitation and emergency services — not to mention getting thousands of people to and from the site.

Those demands could run into Grand Teton’s rules for special events. Events cannot alter the movement of visitors, wildlife or traffic, close roads or trails, or take place in designated wilderness areas. Commercial logos, banners and tent-like structures are also prohibited.

At least one location examined by Lands is reportedly already-disturbed land used for storage rather than untouched parkland. Conservation advocates have nevertheless raised concerns about the environmental impact and precedent of staging a major professional sporting event inside a national park.

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No detailed construction plan or environmental review has been released, leaving unanswered how MLB could stage the game while satisfying those protections.

Even if those hurdles can be cleared, baseball won’t be coming to the Tetons soon. MLB’s 2027 special-event schedule is already set, making 2028 the earliest possible date.