INT. JERRY’S APARTMENT – EVENING
Jerry and Elaine are in the kitchen. Steve trudges in, shoulders slumped, looking defeated.
ELAINE: (eyeing him) What’s wrong? You look like you just found out Aqueduct got the casino.
STEVE: (sighing) The Mets didn’t make the playoffs.
ELAINE: (surprised) Didn’t make the playoffs? How is that even possible? Don’t they have, like, three wild cards now?
JERRY: (mock disbelief) Three wild cards, and somehow you still couldn’t sneak in. You know why? Pitching. You didn’t have enough pitching.
STEVE: (snapping) That’s not true! I signed plenty of pitching! 46 different pitchers. How many pitchers do you want me to sign?
JERRY: Well, maybe one who was ready to pitch seven months without going over their career innings high.
ELAINE: You used forty-six pitchers in one season? Forty-six? Is that even allowed? What did you do, try to collect the whole set?
Steve waves his hands defensively, growing flustered.
STEVE: (insisting) Forty-six pitchers is depth! Depth is good! You can never have too much pitching.
JERRY: (smirking) Oh yes you can.
The door BURSTS open — it’s NEWMAN, red-faced, seething, in a Mets cap pulled down low.
NEWMAN: (furious) You promised us a World Series! Three to five years, you said! THREE to FIVE!
STEVE: (backpedaling) Look…l get it. I’m slightly disappointed myself. We had a pretty good plan.
NEWMAN: (boiling) The only plan you had was to make us the laughingstock of baseball! Do you know what it’s like? Do you know what it’s like to sit in Section 131, night after night, watching relievers I’ve never heard of cough up lead after lead?
JERRY: (dry) I think we have a pretty good idea.
ELAINE: (grinning) Seriously, Steve. You didn’t build a rotation, you built a revolving door.
STEVE: (yelling) Enough! You think it’s easy? You think running a team is just signing Ohtani and Yamamoto and calling it a day?
JERRY: (shrugs) Worked for the Dodgers.
KRAMER: I know some guys in Tokyo….
NEWMAN: (exploding) You wasted five years of my life. FIVE!
STEVE: What about 2024? We were the third wild card! The Grimace!
JERRY: Oh there’s plenty of grimacing going on in Queens right now.
STEVE: (shouting back) Well maybe the next five years will be better!
The room goes silent. Steve realizes what he’s just said. Jerry raises an eyebrow.
JERRY: (smirking) So the three-to-five-year plan… is now a ten-year plan.
ELAINE: (grinning) And by then, you’ll be up to, what, seventy pitchers?
Steve groans and slumps into the chair as Newman glares. Jerry and Elaine exchange amused looks.