STUDIO 60 ON ROOSEVELT AVENUE
EPISODE 3
WRITTEN COMPLETELY BY AARON SORKIN TOTALLY ALONE AND UNDER GREAT DURESS
RELIVE THE EXCITING INAUGURAL SEASON! PILOT | EPISODE 2
LOGLINE: Once the nation’s best and most respected baseball GM, Sandy Alderson has been reduced to trying to revive a moribund franchise is the depths of deepest, darkest Queens. Along with his sharp-witted and adoring protégés, he fights off the seemingly endless series of controversies and crises that beset him while trying to run a sports team in the country’s most bustling metropolis, and still look fantastic while doing it. Can the pressures of such an important job crush this singularly talented and gifted individual genius?
ACT I
The owner’s booth. We hear the roar of the crowd, the unintelligible warble of the PA system, organ riffs. MACKENZIE CARLIN stands near the front, by the floor to ceiling windows, taking it all in. SANDY ALDERSON sidles up her and offers a small flute of champagne .
ALDERSON: Congratulations.
CARLIN: [waving it away] No thank you.
ALDERSON: You’re not going to celebrate your first win in the front office? Not even when the new shortstop you helped pick out just hit six home runs and 15 RBIs?
CARLIN: I don’t drink on the job.
ALDERSON: But the game’s over.
CARLIN: When the game’s over, the job begins.
ALDERSON: That sounds familiar.
CARLIN: It should–you wrote it, in your third autobiography. I wrote in all my Trapper Keepers in high school.
ALDERSON: So tonight you have succeeded in steering us to victory and making me feel horribly old. A raincheck on the champagne, then.
CARLIN politlely puts her champagne down on a coffee table and quickly exits the booth. She slips through the door just as J.P. RICCIARDI and PAUL DEPODESTA enter.
RICCIARDI: Does she ever stop?
ALDERSON: If she has, I blinked and missed it.
DEPODESTA: I guess she has to keep moving forward in order to survive. Kind of like a shark.
ALDERSON: She’s a woman in a man’s world, Paul. She has to work twice as hard to get just as far, you know that.
RICCIARDI: She’s also Einhorn’s tin can phoneline to this front office. Don’t get too chummy with her.
ALDERSON: If I ever get “chummy” with anyone, you have my permission to shoot me. Is there any other reason you two came in here, other than to tell me things I already know?
DEPODESTA: Yes, as a matter of fact. As you know, the next team coming in has star first baseman Grant Linwood, who…
ALDERSON: …Who is the conservative firebrand constantly making waves with loud pronouncements of his political viewpoints and upsetting people with his erratic, transgressive behavior. I’m very familiar with Linwood. I drafted him years ago. Broke my heart when we lost him to the Rule 7 draft. So we beef up security for a few games. By our standards, this barely qualifies as a crisis.
RICCIARDI: I take it you haven’t heard today’s news? Linwood’s done a 360 on a few issues. For one, he just declared he’s for gay marriage and says the government “should stay out of our bedrooms”. But he’s also reaffirmed his fierce anti-gun-control stance and says he plans on carrying a concealed weapon into the stadium because it’s his constitutional right. All while being the leading MVP candidate in the league.
ALDERSON: So what’s the outlook?
DEPODESTA: We’ve already received notice from no fewer than 15 organizations who plan on protesting. Eight Christian groups angry at him for the gay marriage thing, six police organizations mad about the gun thing, and one more group that says it’s not sure what to think but it’s definitely mad and plans on breaking stuff. We also got one fax that looks kind of weird. Something about time shares.
ALDERSON: Wow. We’re just one pregnant nun away from a crisis Yahtzee.
