Major League Baseball has asked the White House for permission to hold an official professional game at a national park, according to a report in the Washington Post, a request that would put America’s pastime inside some of the country’s most protected landscapes.
The league’s pitch did not name a specific park, the Post reported. MLB instead appealed to the Trump administration after the National Park Service declined to sign off on the plan on its own, according to the report.
The White House, for its part, is throwing cold water on the notion that the request came from inside the administration. A spokesperson told the Post that the idea is not a “Presidential directive, nor is it being directed by the White House,” and that it is not a campaign being pushed by the Department of the Interior. “Therefore, this is not a White House or Administration priority,” the statement said.
Even so, administration officials didn’t entirely close the door. The White House told the paper that MLB officials are welcome to tour the country’s parks in search of a suitable location. “If the MLB wants to go on site visits of national parks, that is their prerogative,” the spokesperson said.
The White House also referred further questions back to the league, a response that reads as another signal that the proposal sits far down the administration’s list of concerns.
A familiar playbook for MLB
The national park idea fits a pattern the league has leaned on in recent years: moving regular-season games out of big-league ballparks and into unconventional, made-for-television settings intended to draw attention beyond the sport’s usual audience.
MLB has already played at the Field of Dreams movie diamond in Dyersville, Iowa, at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee, and at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama — a historic venue tied to the Negro Leagues. Each of those events generated national coverage that a standard Tuesday night game in July would not, and the league has been open about wanting more of them.
The park proposal, as described in the Post’s reporting, is one of a number of publicity-driven ideas MLB has weighed as it looks to lift the profile of professional baseball.
Grand Teton eyed as a possible site
The Post also reported that the Trump administration has already scouted locations in Grand Teton National Park, in northwestern Wyoming, where a national baseball field could be built.
National Park Service Deputy Director Frank Lands reportedly surveyed spots inside Grand Teton that had already been disturbed rather than untouched wilderness — areas that would draw less opposition from conservationists and would face fewer regulatory hurdles under park service rules.
Among the parcels Lands looked at, according to the report, was a large plot of land currently used to store materials and broken or unused equipment belonging to the Park Service.
That detail is likely to matter to both sides of any eventual debate. Building on already-developed land inside a national park is generally far less contentious than carving a new facility out of pristine landscape, but any permanent or semi-permanent construction inside a crown jewel like Grand Teton would still invite scrutiny from preservation groups and members of Congress whose districts border the park.
What happens next
Nothing about the proposal appears to be on a fast track. The White House has described it as neither its idea nor its priority, the Park Service has not agreed to it, and MLB has not publicly named a park it wants to use.
The league has not commented publicly on the Post’s reporting. Whether the concept moves from a scouting visit in Wyoming to a scheduled game remains an open question, and the answer may depend less on baseball’s enthusiasm than on a patchwork of federal land-use rules, agency sign-offs, and political appetite inside an administration that says it has other things to do.
For now, the idea exists mainly as a reported request and a few site visits — the earliest, and least certain, stage of what would be an unusual addition to MLB’s growing lineup of destination games.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/sports/2026/09/27/report-mlb-asking-the-white-house-to-play-a-game-at-a-national-park/