Mixed Blood's production of Richard Greenberg's baseball drama Take Me Out saw Darren Lemming (Lindsay Smiling), a rich, arrogant, and handsome young baseball pro, declare his homosexuality to the world. Amid the controversy, his team sank in the standings; then backwoods pitcher Shane Mungitt (Zach Curtis) turned the tide—or would have, were it not for a John Rocker moment on live TV that revealed his extensive knowledge of disparaging epithets and his casual willingness to use them. Smiling played the pro athlete as icily uninterested in the affairs of mortals and indifferent to their perception of him—until a semi-friendship with his accountant Mason (Edward Williams Jr.) compels him to break out a convincingly limited degree of warmth. Under Stan Wojewodski's direction, Take Me Out depicted sports and modern life with depth and cynicism, teasing out the humdrum truths and diffused sense of hollowness throughout the world it portrayed.