The Trump administration is hearing out the MLB in the league’s push to host a professional baseball game in a national park.
Major League Baseball officials have reached out to administration officials to build a ballpark in Grand Teton National Park, the Washington Post reported.
National Park Service Deputy Director Frank Lands took a trip to the park this week to scout three potential locations for the baseball game within the park’s boundaries.
One MLB official told the Post that the idea has been inspired by the league’s successful recurring Field of Dreams game in Iowa.
In a statement, the White House has distanced itself from the project, maintaining that “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 Interior,” and adding that “this is not a White House or Administration priority.”
“If the MLB wants to go on site visits of national parks, that is their prerogative,” the White House said in its statement.
Environmental experts, however, have sounded the alarm at the prospect of building a ballpark to host an MLB game on such grounds. Betsy Buffington, a regional director for the advocacy group National Parks Conservation Association, has said the location would be inappropriate.
“It is irreplaceable. There is no other Grand Teton that is home to bears and wolves and bison, elk and pronghorn,” Buffington told the Post. “So the idea that we would put a baseball stadium in Grand Teton National Park is just — what would the word be? — ludicrous. Crazy. Ridiculous. I mean, I just can’t fathom.”
Local officials also raised alarm over the prospect.
Luther Propst, a county commissioner for Teton County, Wyoming, met with Lands during his visit. He told the Post that federal officials have yet to seek local input and that Lands did not mention it either.
“Grand Teton National Park is about wild America, wildlife, opportunity for solitude, not for more amusement,” Propst said, calling the proposal for a ballpark “a radical departure from the tradition of national parks.”
The MLB has played several games at nonconventional ballparks in the last decade, including games at Fort Bragg, the NASCAR track Bristol Motor Speedway, and at the historic Negro League ballpark, Rickwood Field in Alabama.
But none of them have been played within a National Park, especially as this game would require building and would not use existing infrastructure.
The potential ballpark in the middle of one of the country’s most cherished parks comes as the Trump administration has dramatically reshaped National Parks and cut services.
There have been major cuts to park budgets and staffing. The administration has also considered selling or giving parkland to private developers, including a proposal to give some of Yosemite National Park to a private developer to build a road to access a resort in exchange for private land of equal value.
