MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred on Thursday scrapped an idea to field a baseball game in Grand Teton National Park after locals rejected the league’s interest as “hostile” to public lands.
In a letter to Wyoming officials Thursday, Manfred minimized the plan as one option among “literally scores” of venues considered by the league. MLB officials had contacted the Trump administration about staging a game at a national park “similar to the Field of Dreams game,” according to the White House. An official from the National Park Service had already made a trip to Grand Teton to scout potential sites before pressure from local officials forced Manfred to abandon the idea.
“We obviously would not bring a game to a community that has concerns about the venue, and we will not continue to evaluate Grand Teton National Park as a potential site,” he wrote in the Thursday letter, first reported by The Washington Post.
An MLB official declined to comment Thursday night.
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“This is not a Presidential directive, nor is it being directed by the White House,” a White House spokesperson told The Washington Sun on Sunday. “It’s also not being driven by the Department of Interior.”
The league has hosted several games at nontraditional venues — including one at the historic Negro League ballpark in Birmingham, Alabama, and another at Fort Bragg in North Carolina — Manfred wrote, adding, “We have been careful to leave the selected sites better than when we arrived.”
He characterized the inquiry into Grand Teton as “initial due diligence.”
Teton County Commissioner Luther Propst said that he first spotted Frank Lands, a deputy director for the National Park Service, at Grand Teton last week.
The Teton County Commission and the Jackson Town Council unanimously approved draft letters on Monday objecting to the baseball game idea, Propst said.
“It crystallizes these issues in a way that everybody can understand — that the Trump administration is undertaking a very hostile approach to managing public lands,” Propst said Thursday night.
“It’s a war on our public lands,” he added. “This one we won, but every month there are another dozen assaults.”
In August, The Sun reported that officials within the Trump administration had lobbied the National Park Service regarding a potential land exchange benefitting a private developer who sought to construct an access road between an external property and Yosemite National Park.
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