Should MLB build a ballpark in Grand Teton National Park?

GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK, WYOMING - AUGUST 5: Cars wait in line at the south entrance station on August 5, 2024 in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. Many National Parks have seen an increase in visitors and overcrowding since COVID and are having to take measure to mitigate the crowds. (Photo by

What is the story about?

Major League Baseball’s ongoing quest to grow and find increasingly exotic locations for baseball games is well established. Teams have played games outside the United States (e.g., London, Mexico City, and Tokyo), at Rickwood Field, an historical Negro League ballpark in Birmingham Alabama, at Williamsport, Pennsylvania, as part of the Little League World Series, and, of course, in an Iowa cornfield.

The list is longer, but you get the idea.

On Saturday night, Jake Spring and Stephanie Apstein of

the Washington Post reported, “Major League Baseball has approached the Trump administration about hosting a game at a national park, officials from the White House and MLB confirmed Saturday.”

According to Spring and Apstein, Frank Lands, deputy director of the National Park service, recently visited Grand Teton National Park and scouted three possible locations as a potential ballpark site. All locations are inside the park though one is “disturbed land.”

Later, Spring and Apstein added to their reporting:

After publication of this piece, the White House said in a statement that Lands “has not been actively scouting sites” and was on an official trip to several national parks including Grand Teton, Yellowstone and Grand Canyon.

“The MLB happened to schedule their trip to Grand Teton at the same time that Frank was there,” it said. “It is incorrect to say that Frank is actively scouting sites. It is also incorrect to say that the administration is sending officials to scout sites.”

You can imagine my surprise at reading this story, both as a lifelong Wyoming resident and as a baseball writer. Look, baseball has largely abandoned an appearance of interest in growing the game in this part of the world. (Case in point: Contracting the minor league system resulted in MiLB leaving Montana and having an independent league take its place.)

Still, the story quickly garnered attention in the Cowboy State.

WyoFile (“Grand Teton National Ballpark? Visitors call it a field of nightmares”) and Cowboy State Daily (“MLB’s pitch to build a baseball park in Grand Teton National Park will backfire, locals say”) published articles on the story before the weekend had ended. In addition, on Monday, the Town Council of Jackson, the Teton County Commissioners, and the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce made public a letter they wrote to Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in which they voiced opposition to the proposal.

Not many folks live in Wyoming — just under 600,000 — but the initial sense here is that building a ballpark in America’s 8th-most-visited national park is not a popular idea.

That said, it’s worth taking a look at the possibilities given what we know.

Let me begin with a caveat: I am no expert on public policy, but I am interested in teasing out the workability of such a project and the possible motives behind it.

What would it take?

Building a baseball park is a significant undertaking under the best circumstances. That said, building one in an environment designed to preserve the environment rather than encourage development seems foolhardy.

It would mean, for example, building roads, installing power lines, and adding potable water sources — all in a hostile environment. (The Athletics are building a new stadium in Las Vegas where the utilities are readily available; in a national park, that is not the case. Those utilities have to be installed in addition to constructing the facility itself.)

Because of weather, the building season itself would be short — maybe May through October; housing resources for those working on the project would be expensive and scarce; and there would be a constant threat of weather and wild animals. Add to that roads that are not designed to encourage travel or hauling construction materials.

All of that assumes MLB is able to get the necessary permitting to do the project.

I’m neither an architect nor an engineer, but I know enough to be sure this would be a challenging project.

Incidentally, Angus M. Theurmer Jr. of WyoFile notes that Grand Teton did have a baseball park at Moose as part of a house complex, “[b]ut the Park Service converted the open space to additional quarters for park staff in response to Jackson Hole’s worker housing crunch.”

What might the game look like?

Still, let’s consider what the game itself might look like should it take place.

Coors Field, step aside. “Baseball at Altitude” is about to take on a whole new meaning.

For example, the elevation is 6,783 feet above sea level near Jenny Lake, located in Grand Teton National Park, which is significantly higher than the 5,280 of the Mile High City. So the ball would fly.

Presumably, the players would fly in prior to the event — the Jackson Hole Airport can accommodate the air traffic, but lodging would be very in demand given the limited supply — and players will get to adjust to the elevation change in real time.

Then there’s the question of what would happen during the game. After all, they’re playing baseball in a national park, and wildlife roams freely. As anyone who’s ever driven through a national park knows, the land belongs to the animals first. When a herd of bison crosses a road, traffic stops until the members decide to move on.

Why would MLB not assume similar disruptions during a baseball game being played in a national park?

(Look, it’s fun to watch a “rally squirrel” on the scoreboard at Coors Field. Having a moose saunter into left field is another matter altogether.)

Of course, that problem could be addressed with the addition of a bear fence, but if MLB wants the aesthetics of the Tetons, that would seem to be antithetical to the general vibe, even if it kept players and fans safe. (I suppose MLB could issue bear spray to players.)

There is simply nothing practical about playing a baseball game in a national park.

As Representative Mike Yin (D-Jackson), wrote to me in an email:

I think if the MLB wants to have an exhibition game, ensure that the game is worth watching more than the scenery. Who does it serve to trample a landscape for an exhibition game that very few people will actually be able to experience?

As long as the sport is one that people enjoy watching, there is no need to try to put on some weird promotional match in the middle of a National Park. We can all enjoy the experience of the sport at stadiums that already exist.

Why do this?

On one hand, this just looks like MLB doing some promotional work — and I’m sure that’s true. I mean, who doesn’t want to see the rugged profile of Aaron Judge outlined against Mount Owen?

Let me suggest another reason.

In their article, Spring and Apstein write this: “National parks are among the country’s most protected federal lands, and constructing a sports facility at Grand Teton could set a new precedent for the use of vast national park land in the Western United States.”

Repurposing public lands, you say?

I realize we don’t talk about politics on Purple Row, but allow me a moment to discuss one of the topics that motivates people in Wyoming: public lands.

It is the single issue I know of that cuts across voter registrations. In this very red state, people value public lands for recreation and hunting. Federal legislation introduced last year by Utah Senator Mike Lee that would have sold 3.3 million acres of public lands met with fierce local opposition and political action in Wyoming’s August primary. (And there’s a case to be made that if those public lands went up for sale, only the very wealthy — the folks who live in Teton County, the wealthiest county in the United States — would be the benefactors and that they would restrict access from the general public.)

And I would be curious to know if Joe Ricketts — executive chairman of the Chicago Cubs, founder of TD Ameritrade, and current resident of Teton County — has an opinion on this topic.

MLB has made me cynical enough to question the logic behind this idea because there is no universe in which playing a baseball game in Grand Teton National Park makes sense.

Final thoughts

I was thinking about my own attendance should MLB manage to stage a game in Grand Teton National Park.

I’d need to stay with my folks down in central Wyoming and make the drive on the day of the game since there’s no way I could afford a hotel room in Jackson Hole during tourist season, assuming one was available. (Pro tip: If you’re taking the Moran Entrance, stop at the Sinclair in Dubois to fill up before you head into the park.) I’d have to plan early for traffic and animal-related delays, so it would be a long day.

Surely the Colorado Rockies would be one of the teams, right?

I mean, how can you play in the mountains and not include the baseball team named for the mountain range in which Grand Teton National Park is located? Perhaps the Arizona Diamondbacks would play the Rockies since snakes are part of the Yellowstone ecosystem.

But who am I kidding?

This is a terrible idea.

I suspect that MLB sent out a test balloon in leaking this story. The air should be out of it by now.

As Theurmer Jr writes:

The Park Service already has an appropriate site for a baseball game at a historic site it oversees in California. A game was recently played at the Manzanar National Historic Site where thousands of Japanese Americans were interned during WWII.

In 2024, the Little Tokyo Giants played the Lodi JACL Templars, the first time the field had been used since the Manzanar camp was closed in 1945.

With that in mind, if MLB is committed to bringing baseball to Wyoming, let me recommend building a field and playing a game at the site of the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center between Cody and Powell. During World War II when Japanese Americans were confined there, Heart Mountain’s team met Gila River in 1944. The all-star teams played 13 games over 15 days to determine the winner.

It would be great to see MLB call attention to the Center and the history it preserves.

I’ll be the first to say that Heart Mountain lacks the celebrity of the Grand Teton, and rows of beets aren’t as iconic as corn fields.

But Heart Mountain is a more feasible site for a baseball game, and it, too, has a story to tell.

I also reached out to Senator Eric Barlow (R-Gillette), who is expected to win the governor’s race in November, and Senator Mike Gierau (D-Jackson), but did not receive a reply.