Major League Baseball approached U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration regarding the possibility of hosting a game at a national park, specifically at Grand Teton National Park
A White House official confirmed MLB had inquired about hosting a baseball game at a national park, adding that “no permits have been granted” by the National Park Service. However …
… the White House also said that it was “incorrect” that members of the administration had already scouted locations at Grand Teton National Park. We could not verify this independently as it stemmed from a report by The Washington Post that cited two anonymous sources. We reached out to MLB and the NPS and await a response.
In September 2026, a rumor spread that Major League Baseball had approached U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to inquire about the possibility of hosting a game at a national park.
Several social media posts on Facebook, Reddit and Instagram made this claim. One X post said MLB was specifically targeting Grand Teton National Park (archived):
Several Snopes readers emailed seeking confirmation of the rumor.
We found that the claim is a mixture of true and undetermined information.
It is true that MLB approached the White House to ask about hosting a baseball game in a national park, a White House official said in an email to Snopes. However, the official also said “no permits have been granted” by the National Park Service.
In a follow-up email, the official said the assertion that members of the Trump administration had scouted sites for a ballpark at Grand Teton National Park was “incorrect.”
The claim stemmed from a Sept. 26, 2026, report by The Washington Post that said Trump’s administration “has scouted locations in Grand Teton National Park to build a baseball park to host an MLB game, according to two other people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.”
Because the Post used anonymous sources, we could not independently verify this information.
We also reached out to MLB seeking details and to the NPS. We await their responses.
A baseball game in a national park
“The MLB came to the Administration asking if it was possible to host a game at a national park, similar to the Field of Dreams game,” the White House official told Snopes, referring to a special game played during the baseball season at a site near Field of Dreams, a location in Iowa that served as the set of the 1989 movie “Field of Dreams.”
The official added that this was “not a Presidential directive, nor is it being directed by the White House. It’s also not being driven by the Department of Interior.” The official also said the administration could not stop MLB officials from scouting locations at national parks, but noted that “no decisions have been made by the MLB and no permits have been granted by NPS.”
The Post’s story said an MLB official, who was quoted anonymously, said hosting a game in a national park was “one of several that MLB is exploring.”
One concern opponents of the project expressed had to do with the environmental impact of building a stadium in a nature preserve.
A Sept. 27 blog post on the website the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and strengthening U.S. national parks, quoted the group’s president and CEO, Tiernan Sittenfeld, as saying, “The Department of Interior should reject this idea and publicly say that there will be no baseball stadium in Grand Teton, now or ever.”
A 2024 report by The Guardian said that since 2020, nearly 95% of donations by major U.S. sports team owners had gone to Republicans, Trump’s political party.
“If this administration is willing to carve out a piece of Grand Teton for special interests, they would be turning their back on a century of enthusiastic bipartisan support and a legacy of national parks that are, in the words of President George H.W. Bush, our ‘common heritage borrowed from future generations which should be passed on as a precious inheritance,'” Betsy Buffington, regional director of the NPCA Northern Rockies regional office, told Snopes in an email.
For further reading, Snopes previously investigated the rumor that the Trump administration was allowing hunting in national parks. We also looked into the claim that the White House was considering a deal that would give a piece of Yosemite National Park to a private developer.
