By Kevin Hendricks
Major League Baseball won’t build its next field of dreams in Grand Teton National Park. But New Mexico’s senior senator says the league hasn’t ruled out other national parks, and he wants answers before anyone yells “play ball.”
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, a Democrat from New Mexico, on Thursday that the league would stop considering the Wyoming park, according to a statement from Heinrich’s office. Heinrich, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, sent Manfred a letter Sept. 29 urging the league to back off.
“Our national parks are no place for hosting professional sports games,” Heinrich said.
Manfred made no promises about other park sites, Heinrich said, and the senator vowed to keep pressing.
Manfred pitched a different account of how far the idea got. In his letter, the commissioner said MLB was doing early due diligence on many potential sites and had not yet studied environmental impacts or sought community input.
“MLB has no formal plan to play a game in Grand Teton National Park,” Manfred wrote, the Associated Press reported.
In his letter, Heinrich argued MLB has at least 30 stadiums to choose from and said neither the league nor the Trump administration sought public input. He also pointed to the park’s grizzly bears, moose, bison and pronghorn migration route as reasons to keep the bleachers out.