Culture
MLB Power Rankings: Rangers, Yankees on the rise; Dodgers are right where you think they are
By Tim Britton, Johnny Flores Jr. and Andy McCullough
Every week, we ask a selected group of our baseball writers — local and national — to rank the teams from first to worst. Here are the collective results, with the average rankings of our panel in parentheses.
The first weekend of the baseball season offered its usual cornucopia of familiar sights and unexpected delights. Shohei Ohtani sent a baseball soaring over the fence at Dodger Stadium; Aaron Judge sent four of his own into orbit in the Bronx. Zack Wheeler looked sharp. Paul Skenes threw hard. Matt Chapman still knows how to pick it. The Braves called up Jesse Chavez.
All of those could have been predicted. But raise your hand if you’d heard of Kameron Misner before last week. Or if you thought Rafael Devers would spend all weekend whiffing. Or if you knew the biggest story in the sport would involve something called a “torpedo bat.”
It’s the time of year when every team still can be optimistic, both about the things they expected and some that have caught them by surprise. Here’s a look at the most encouraging sign from the season’s opening weekend for all 30 teams.
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MLB Preseason Power Rankings: Where is your favorite team starting the 2025 season?
Record: 6-0
Preseason Power Ranking: 1
Most encouraging sign: Uh, everything?
Roki Sasaki hasn’t been throwing strikes. Mookie Betts hasn’t been able to keep down solid food. Max Muncy hasn’t been making much contact. So far, none of it has really mattered. The Dodgers swept the first two series of the season, taking down the Tigers after downing the Cubs twice in Japan. Ohtani looks like himself. So does Freddie Freeman (although he was not in Monday’s lineup because of a tweak to his surgically-repaired ankle). Betts returned from his gnarly stomach bug to swat a walkoff homer. Michael Conforto has lengthened the lineup. The summer figures to be a delight for Dodgers fans — and a nightmare for all the clubs visiting Chavez Ravine. — Andy McCullough
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Shohei Ohtani leads MLB players in jersey sales, six Dodgers crack top 20 list
Record: 3-0
Preseason Power Ranking: 7
Most encouraging sign: Either the Yankees own magic bats or their lineup hits for enough power to make everyone believe they own magic bats
The biggest story of opening weekend was the Yankees’ use of so-called torpedo bats, which move the barrel down from the end of the bat to a spot closer to the handle. New York smashed 15 home runs in three games against the Brewers, or more long balls than the Mets had hits over the weekend.
The bats are legal, and the Yankees aren’t the only team using them. But New York’s lineup overwhelmed the Brewers so comprehensively that hitters around the league are intrigued. Of course, Judge used a boring old normal bat to slug four homers in three games. Imagine that guy with a magic bat. — Tim Britton
Record: 3-2
Preseason Power Ranking: 10
Most encouraging sign: Wyatt Langford took a step toward taking the leap
The Rangers brass believes its postseason-missing campaign in 2024 was an aberration and the championship season of 2023 should become more of the norm. Part of the reason is Langford, who was drafted No. 4 that summer. The 23-year-old outfielder held his own as a rookie last season, with 16 homers and an 111 OPS+ in 134 games. Texas believes his ceiling is much higher than that.
In the first weekend of the season, Langford’s five-hit series helped the Rangers knock off the Red Sox. If Langford approaches his potential, a Texas offense that already includes Corey Seager, Marcus Semien and Joc Pederson will be that much more intimidating. — McCullough
Record: 0-5
Preseason Power Ranking: 2
Most encouraging sign: An 0-4 start in the NL East actually portends greatness
Atlanta is just the ninth team in the last five seasons to start the year 0-4, and five of those teams have resided in the NL East. You might think, given what you know, that starting 0-4 is not optimal, and that starting 0-4 in a typically difficult division like the NL East would be especially troublesome. But it’s basically the opposite.
The other four NL East teams to start 0-4 since 2021 are:
• The 2024 Mets, who went to the NLCS
• The 2022 Phillies, who went to the World Series
• The 2021 Braves, who won the World Series
• The 2024 Marlins, who are the exception that proves the rule.
— Britton
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MLB suspends Braves’ Jurickson Profar 80 games for PEDs
Record: 3-1
Preseason Power Ranking: 4
Most encouraging sign: Jesús Luzardo looked like his best self
While the Phillies are running it back with mostly the same lineup, their deal for Luzardo feels like it went under the radar in the winter. Filling in a fifth starter role that was problematic for long stretches of 2024 for Philadelphia, Luzardo went and struck out 11 Nationals in five innings. In short, he pitched like he did for most of the ’23 season with the Marlins, when All-Star games and Cy Young votes appeared on his horizon. If that’s the version of Luzardo the Phillies get to round out their rotation, they can be even better than the 95-win outfit they were a season ago. — Britton
Record: 2-2
Preseason Power Ranking: 3
Most encouraging sign: The offense still looks dangerous
After leading the sport in runs last season, Arizona let two crucial hitters, Christian Walker and Pederson, depart in free agency. The team asked a new addition, Josh Naylor, to replace Walker at first base, with holdover Pavin Smith taking Pederson’s at-bats as designated hitter. Naylor and Smith appeared up to the task against the Cubs over the weekend. Naylor drove in three runs and scored three more. Smith clubbed three doubles. The four home runs from Eugenio Suárez didn’t hurt, either. The Diamondbacks may not be able to overtake the Dodgers, but they can hang with anyone. — McCullough
Record: 5-0
Preseason Power Ranking: 13
Most encouraging sign: The back-end starters looked sharp
San Diego’s four-game sweep of Atlanta provided a reminder to anyone who had forgotten: No team pushed the Dodgers harder last season than the Padres. Even if San Diego did not spend to keep up with L.A. this winter, the top-end talent is still there. With Joe Musgrove out for the season and Yu Darvish on the shelf with an elbow injury, the team will need Nick Pivetta and Randy Vásquez to help keep the rotation afloat behind Dylan Cease and Michael King. Pivetta and Vásquez combined for 13 innings of scoreless baseball against Atlanta. — McCullough
Record: 1-4
Preseason Power Ranking: 6
Most encouraging sign: Kristian Campbell fit right in
In his first series in the big leagues, Campbell showed why the Red Sox maneuvered their infield around to make room for the 23-year-old (and why they appear willing to commit to a long-term contract extension for him). Of the six hits he picked up in four games against the Rangers, three were for extra bases (including his first major-league homer), and he showcased his defensive versatility by starting a game in left field. Ask Xander Bogaerts and Jackie Bradley Jr., and even Mookie Betts what it’s like to be a young, unproven player on a win-now roster in Boston. For one weekend, Campbell — the first in a long line of prospects slated to debut for the Red Sox soon — made it look easy. — Britton
Record: 2-2
Preseason Power Ranking: 5
Most encouraging sign: The rotation has a chance
It’s a tradition for teams to throw their best starter on Opening Day, followed by their second best and third best, etc. The Mets, foremost keepers of that custom as evidenced by their ridiculous record on Opening Day, decided this year to zag: In their opening series with Houston, they started pitchers who ranked fifth, sixth and seventh in the hierarchy at the start of spring training.
Sure, injuries drove that decision. But New York went with Clay Holmes, Tylor Megill and Griffin Canning against the Astros, and they actually pitched pretty well. Megill and Canning, in particular, cruised for stretches by shifting their pitch mixes and ditching those that didn’t work for them in 2024. The Mets earned some benefit of the doubt by maximizing Sean Manaea and Luis Severino last year, and they might be at it again. — Britton
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Can the Mets’ Francisco Lindor start hot this time? He’s wondering, too
Record: 3-2
Preseason Power Ranking: 9
Most encouraging sign: Adley Rutschman went yard twice
A lot of Baltimore’s limp toward the finish line in 2024 derived from Rutschman’s prolonged second-half slump: He had a .585 OPS after the break, barely cracking a .200 average and hitting all of three home runs.
He nearly matched that power total on Opening Day, when he went deep twice in Toronto. The Orioles have enough young talent to withstand an unexpectedly down season from someone, somewhere. But Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson are the driving forces of that position-player core — the duo that lifts the ceiling of this group from postseason participant to World Series challenger. — Britton
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The Windup: An unbelievable Opening Day streak
Record: 2-2
Preseason Power Ranking: 8
Most encouraging sign: Jose Altuve is still Jose Altuve — at the plate
Altuve’s transition from second base to left field has featured plenty of hiccups. He biffed several low-stress plays in the Grapefruit League during spring training. It will still take him time to adjust to fielding near Daikin Park’s Crawford Boxes. The team may need to remove him for defensive purposes later in games, as manager Joe Espada did on Sunday. But Altuve can still hit better than almost every other person on the planet. In a season-opening series victory against the Mets, Altuve collected five hits in 11 at-bats. With Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker gone, the lineup requires hearty contributions from Altuve more than ever. — McCullough
Record: 2-3
Preseason Power Ranking: 11
Most encouraging sign: Andrés Muñoz still has it
The 2025 Mariners looked a lot like the Mariners of recent vintage in a four-game sample against the Athletics. The rotation is strong despite the absence of George Kirby; Logan Gilbert demonstrated why he is a trendy Cy Young Award candidate with seven innings of one-run baseball on Opening Day. The lineup, of course, is less daunting. Seattle will need Muñoz, an All-Star reliever in 2024, to lock down as many save opportunities as he can. Muñoz bookended the Athletics series with crisp performances, sitting down six of the seven batters he faced. — McCullough
Record: 3-4
Preseason Power Ranking: 12
Most encouraging sign: Kyle Tucker is that guy
On Saturday, Tucker came within one triple of the cycle. The next day, his three-run homer in the eighth inning gave the Cubs a 97 percent chance of winning. That’s exactly the player that Tucker is. On any given day of the week, he gives you a strong chance to win, whether that’s with his defense, bat or speed. If the Cubs manage to get out of the 83-win cellar, it’ll be because Kyle Tucker does Kyle Tucker things for a full campaign. — Johnny Flores Jr.
Record: 3-2
Preseason Power Ranking: 18
Most encouraging sign: Is Bo Bichette back?
A series of maladies to his right leg undercut Bichette’s production from late 2023 through all of last season. (Bichette’s career OPS before his knee injury in August 2023 was .834; since his recovery it was .625 through the end of last season.) In the opening series with Baltimore, the shortstop in his platform season picked up seven hits, including two doubles, and scored four times.
When Bichette and Vlad Guerrero Jr. have both been at their best, the Blue Jays tend to win 90-plus games, as they did in 2021 and 2022. Toronto has one more shot to put it all together behind that duo this year. — Britton
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Blue Jays pitcher Max Scherzer placed on 15-day IL with thumb inflammation
Record: 3-1
Preseason Power Ranking: 20
Most encouraging sign: Justin Verlander looked closer to 40 than 45
Verlander made his Giants debut a little over a month after his 42nd birthday. It was only five innings, but Verlander subdued the Reds with his fastball. His velocity touched 96 mph. He generated six whiffs with the heater. All of this is encouraging for a club that will rely upon its arms and defense to stay within striking distance of a postseason berth. But the bigger question will come as the season progresses: Can Verlander continue to hold off Father Time? — McCullough
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Justin Verlander, Astros had ‘mutual interest’ in reunion during offseason
Record: 1-3
Preseason Power Ranking: T-16
Most encouraging sign: Spencer Torkelson might be putting it together
By this point, it’s no secret that this is something of a make-or-break season for former No. 1 overall pick Spencer Torkelson. The former Arizona State slugger largely forced his way into Detroit’s 2025 plans with a standout spring (.340/.389/.680) and picked up right where he left off to begin the season. Four hits, including one double and one homer, as well as four walks against the defending World Series champions are a major development for Torkelson. It’s the type of performance that will keep him on the roster, even as the Tigers begin to see the likes of Wenceel Perez and Matt Vierling come off the IL. — Flores
Record: 3-1
Preseason Power Ranking: 14
Most encouraging sign: The rotation holdovers held it down over the weekend
Before Drew Rasmussen returned this week, before Shane McClanahan comes back down the line, before the Rays have all the makings of a shutdown rotation — the guys who kept them in it last year looked just fine again over the weekend. The trio of Ryan Pepiot, Zach Littell and Taj Bradley combined to allow four earned runs in 18 innings, striking out 22 and walking one. That’s the kind of ratio that plays regardless of how much smaller your new home ballpark is.
Rasmussen and McClanahan (along with Shane Baz, who came back in the second half last season) certainly raise the level of what the Rays can do this season. But the three holdovers from last year make this a dangerously deep rotation as well. — Britton
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Rays prepare for a sunny season of home-field challenges (and maybe home-field advantages)
Record: 0-4
Preseason Power Ranking: T-16
Most encouraging sign: Joe Ryan’s return from injury
In his first start since August, Ryan posted five innings of one-run ball with no walks and five strikeouts. It was an encouraging sign for the 29-year-old, who missed much of last year’s second half due to a season-ending grade 2 teres major sprain. The Twins will need these kinds of starts to make up for a lackluster winter, in which they did not make any free agent moves until well into February. Much like the Mariners out west, if the bats are going to struggle to put together hits, it’ll be on the starters to keep other teams in line and give the team just enough opportunities to make a difference. That Ryan was able to look mostly like his old self is a strong sign in that regard. — Flores
Record: 2-2
Preseason Power Ranking: 21
Most encouraging sign: Kyle Manzardo’s bat
For what feels like years, the Guardians have been searching for another complementary hitter to pair with José Ramírez. Franmil Reyes went from hitting in the middle of their order to playing in Japan, the Josh Bell experiment didn’t work and Josh Naylor is no longer in Cleveland. It’s only three games, but Manzardo looked like the hitter that the Guardians need, slugging two homers over Cleveland’s first three games. It’s the type of stabilizing presence that could carry the Guardians into another AL Central title and perhaps even a longer postseason run. — Flores
Record: 0-4
Preseason Power Ranking: 15
Most encouraging sign: Freddy Peralta looks like Freddy Peralta
The Yankees’ lineup may have thrashed the rest of Milwaukee’s staff, but the same can’t be said about Peralta, who turned in five innings of two-run ball on Opening Day. With news of Aaron Civale being placed on the IL, the Brewers are down to just two established starters, Peralta and Nestor Cortes. For Milwaukee to stay afloat in the NL Central until Jose Quintana, Tobias Myers and Brandon Woodruff all make their season debuts, it’ll be on Peralta to provide stability every fifth day. Five solid innings against one of baseball’s best offenses is a step in that direction. — Flores
Record: 2-2
Preseason Power Ranking: 19
Most encouraging sign: Jonathan India at leadoff
While the Royals still feel a bit like Bobby Witt Jr. and company, the addition of India provides Kansas City with another bat to give the lineup a bit more length. If at least one of the Royals’ 5-9 hitters (10-for-56 with 11 strikeouts) can turn into a serviceable bat, the team can go from being in the bottom half leaguewide on offense to something more middle-of-the-pack. India goes a long way in helping the team get there. — Flores
Record: 3-1
Preseason Power Ranking: 24
Most encouraging sign: Nolan Arenado might still have it
After spending what felt like the entire offseason in an awkward trade limbo, Arenado came out and reminded everyone of the player that he can still be. Over three games, he authored five hits, three of which went for extra bases. He got the curtain-call treatment from the St. Louis faithful, and the Cardinals marched to a 3-0 start, just how everyone drew it up. A return to form for Arenado could make absorbing his salary a bit more palatable for another team, or provide St. Louis with enough reason to try to make the postseason in an otherwise weak NL Central. — Flores
Record: 2-2
Preseason Power Ranking: 23
Most encouraging sign: Nick Lodolo’s ability to battle
In his first start of 2025, Lodolo did not have his best stuff, nor did he really have any command of the strike zone. He still managed to turn in six innings of two-run ball. In particular, after throwing 57 pitches through the first three innings, Lodolo needed just 29 to complete his next three, retiring eight of nine batters. He relied on his defense to make plays behind him with the Reds suffocating 11 grounders to keep the Giants off the bases. It’s the kind of start that veteran pitchers know how to make and one that will be important for Cincinnati as Lodolo looks to take a step forward in his age-27 season. — Flores
Record: 2-3
Preseason Power Ranking: 25
Most encouraging sign: A healthy Jeffrey Springs is a low-key beast
Springs struck out nine Mariners across six scoreless innings in his Athletics debut. He scattered three singles and walked one. He looked a lot like the pitcher who starred for Tampa Bay in 2022 before Tommy John surgery wiped him out for most of the next two seasons. The Athletics took on Springs’ salary this past winter and paired him with Luis Severino atop the rotation. The duo should help the Athletics, for the first time in a while, at least stay competitive in the American League West. — McCullough
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As Athletics begin their Sacramento residency, a city tentatively opens its arms
Record: 1-4
Preseason Power Ranking: 22
Most encouraging sign: The starting pitching was strong
Here are the lines for Pittsburgh’s starters through the first four games:
Paul Skenes: 5 1/3 IP | 2 ER | 2 BB | 7 K
Mitch Keller: 6 IP | 1 ER | 1 BB | 4 K
Bailey Falter: 6 IP | 2 ER | 4 K
Andrew Heaney: 5 IP | 1 ER | 1 BB | 1 K
Here’s the Pirates’ record through four games: 1-3, with three losses all on walk-offs. Consider that Jared Jones is on the IL and Bubba Chandler is in Indianapolis, meaning there is room for this rotation to be even stronger. Starting pitching is half the battle, and provided the lineup can string together just enough hits, this team could end up winning a lot more games than originally anticipated. — Flores
Record: 1-3
Preseason Power Ranking: 26
Most encouraging sign: MacKenzie Gore can do that?
Since they lowered the mound in 1969, here’s the list of pitchers with more strikeouts in an Opening Day start than the 13 Gore piled up against the Phillies:
• Randy Johnson (1993 and 1996)
• Shane Bieber (2020)
Bieber won the Cy Young that season. Johnson won it five times, though not in either of those seasons.
How good was Gore Thursday? His FIP is 1.70 — sorry, minus-1.70, which, if maintained, would be a record. Since coming over in the Juan Soto trade, the lefty has established himself as a pretty good major-league starter. Thursday suggested the leap to something more could be imminent. — Britton
Record: 3-2
Preseason Power Ranking: 28
Most encouraging sign: Clutch exists and the Marlins have it
Statistically speaking, the best chance for the Marlins to outperform expectations is to be, and this is a specifically defined term, “crazy good” in close games — 2012 Orioles good in close games. And in the first weekend, that somehow looked like a plausible blueprint.
Miami became the first team since the ’01 Tigers to win with three walk-offs in its first series. You hear ’01 Tigers and probably think of Tony Clark and Bobby Higginson. No, I mean the ’01 Tigers of Kids Gleason and Elberfeld — the 1901 Tigers, who overcame deficits of nine, one and three in the ninth inning to earn those walk-offs against the ur-Milwaukee Brewers. It’s disheartening no one on that Detroit roster earned “Clutch” as a nickname, but their mistake doesn’t have to be ours. What a game Clutch Conine had Sunday, eh? — Britton
Record: 3-1
Preseason Power Ranking: 27
Most encouraging sign: Jack Kochanowicz missed some bats
Kochanowicz, a 24-year-old right-hander, presented a puzzle for analysts last season. He stands 6-foot-7 and wields a fastball that touches the upper 90s. Yet in his rookie season, he struck out only 3.4 batters per nine innings. He has solid command, so any improvement to his whiff rate could help him level up. He made decent progress in his first outing of 2025. It was only four batters in six innings, and it occurred against the White Sox. But progress is progress is progress. — McCullough
Record: 1-3
Preseason Power Ranking: 29
Most encouraging sign: Ryan McMahon could rejuvenate his trade value…
But then again, the Rockies haven’t been very aggressive with trying to move homegrown players in recent years. McMahon is a quality defender at third base, but he’s been a slightly below-average hitter for his entire career. There is probably a team or two willing to gamble on McMahon’s upside getting out of Colorado, especially if he produces at the plate like he did in the season’s first weekend. — McCullough
Record: 2-2
Preseason Power Ranking: 30
Most encouraging sign: Chicago’s 1-2 punch
Yes, the White Sox lost two of three games to the Angels, and yes, they had a massive malfunction with their tarp that became the stuff of internet tomfoolery.
We’re getting close to the finished product.
The White Sox have a lot of tarps. pic.twitter.com/QfRyuvsGuF
— Sam Blum (@SamBlum3) March 30, 2025
But consider this: Between Opening Day starter Sean Burke and Game 2 arm Jonathan Cannon, the duo managed to put up 11 scoreless innings, with eight strikeouts against just three walks. Now, the Angels aren’t some offensive powerhouse, and the weather was rather cold, but seeing as Chicago lost an astounding 121 games in 2024, a reliable 1-2 duo is the kind of progress that the White Sox need so that they stay away from another historically bad season. — Flores
(Top image of Texas’ Wyatt Langford and Joc Pederson: Ron Jenkins / Getty Images)
SELLING OPPORTUNITY: The Story of Mary Kay, by Mary Lisa Gavenas
Mary Kay, the cosmetics company whose multilevel marketing included sales parties and whose biggest earners were awarded pink Cadillacs, was really in the business of selling second chances. Or, at least, that’s what Mary Lisa Gavenas argues in “Selling Opportunity,” a dual biography of the brand and the woman behind it.
Mary Kathlyn Wagner, who would become Mary Kay Ash, “the most famous saleswoman in the world” and “maybe the most famous ever,” in Gavenas’s extravagant words, was born in 1918 to a poor family and raised mostly in Houston. Although a good student, she eloped at 16 with a slightly older boy. The young couple had two babies in quick succession.
Mary Kay’s creation was a combination of timing and good luck. Door-to-door sales was a thriving industry — but, traditionally, a man’s world: Lugging heavy samples was not considered feminine, and entering the homes of strangers, unsafe. But things began to change during the Great Depression, Gavenas suggests, thanks to a convergence of factors — financial pressures and the rise of the aspirational prosperity gospel espoused by Dale Carnegie’s self-help manuals.
At the same time, female-run beauty lines like Annie Turnbo Malone’s Poro and Madam C.J. Walker’s were finding great success in Black communities. And, coincidentally or otherwise, the California Perfume Company changed its name to Avon Products in 1939.
Ash began by selling books door to door, moving on to Stanley Home Products in the 1940s. She was talented, but direct sales was a rough gig. Every party to show off wares was supposed to beget two more bookings; these led to sales that resulted in new recruits. But there was no real security or stability: no salary, no medical benefits, no vacations. “Stop selling and you would end up right back where you started. Or worse,” the author writes.
Gavenas, a onetime beauty editor who wrote “Color Stories,” takes her time unspooling Mary Kay’s tale, with a great deal of evident research. We learn about direct sales, women’s rights and Texas history.
But, be warned: Readers must really enjoy both this woman and this world to take pleasure in “Selling Opportunity.” Mary Kay the person keeps marrying, getting divorced or widowed and working her way through various sales jobs (it’s hard to keep track of the myriad companies and last names). Gavenas seems to leave no detail out. Thus, the 1963 founding of the eponymous beauty company doesn’t come until almost 200 pages in.
Beauty by Mary Kay included a Cleansing Cream, a Magic Masque and a Nite Cream (which containined ammoniated mercury, later banned by the F.D.A.). The full line of products — which was how Mary Kay strongly encouraged customers to buy them — ran to a steep $175 in today’s money. (To fail to acquire the whole set, Ash said, was “like giving you my recipe for chocolate cake but leaving out an important ingredient.”)
Potential clients attended gatherings at acquaintances’ homes — no undignified doorbell-ringing here — where they received a mini facial, then an application of cosmetics like foundation, lip color and cream rouge — and a wig. The company made $198,514 in sales its first year.
Although Ash may have seemed a pioneer, in many ways Mary Kay was a traditionalist company, whose philosophy was “God first, family second, career third.” Saleswomen, official literature dictated, were working to provide themselves with treats rather than necessities so as not to threaten their breadwinner husbands.
And yet, they were also encouraged to sell sell sell. Golden Goblet pendants were awarded for major orders. After the company started using custom pink Peterbilt trucks for shipping, it began commissioning those Cadillacs for top consultants. (Mary Kay preferred gifts to cash bonuses, lest women save the money to spend on practical things rather than the licensed frivolities.) The Cadillacs, always driven on company leases, would become industry legend and part of American pop culture lore. “Never to be run-down, repainted or resold, the cars would double as shining pink advertisements for her selling opportunity,” Gavenas writes.
The woman herself was iconic, too. While Ash was a product of the Depression, she was also undeniably over-the-top. She wore white suits with leopard trim, lived in a custom Frank L. Meier house and brought her poodle to the office.
Mary Kay went public in 1968, making her the first woman to chair a company on the New York Stock Exchange. By the 1990s, the Mary Kay headquarters near Dallas was almost 600,000 square feet. They commissioned a hagiographic company biopic; there was a Mary Kay consultant Barbie; they were making $1 billion in wholesale. When she died, in 2001, Ash was worth $98 million.
And yet, Gavenas cites that at the company’s height, in 1992, sales reps made on average just $2,400 per year.
Instead of so much time in the pink fantasia of Mary Kay, it would have been nice for a few detours showing how infrequently the opportunities the company sold were truly realized.
SELLING OPPORTUNITY: The Story of Mary Kay | By Mary Lisa Gavenas | Viking | 435 pp. | $35
We often think of the past as if it were another world — and in some ways, it is. The politics, religion and social customs of other eras can be vastly different from our own. But one thing historians and historical fiction writers alike often notice is the constancy of human emotion. The righteous anger of a customer complaining about a Mesopotamian copper merchant in 1750 B.C. feels familiar. Tributes to beloved household pets from ancient Romans and Egyptians make us smile. And we are captivated by stories of love, betrayal and sacrifice from Homer to Shakespeare and beyond.
In literature, letters, tablets and even on coins, we find overwhelming evidence that people in the past felt the same emotions we do. Love, hate, fear, grief, joy: These feelings were as much a part of their lives as they are of our own. And they resonate especially acutely in the bond between mother and child. Here are eight historical novels that explore the meaning of motherhood across the centuries.
Sometime in the 2000s, the producer Lindsay Doran asked her doctor for a book recommendation. “I’m reading that book everybody’s reading,” the doctor replied. “You know, the one about the shepherd who’s murdered and the sheep solve the crime.”
Doran had not heard of the book, “Three Bags Full,” a best-selling novel by a German graduate student (“No one’s reading it,” she recalls responding, inaccurately), but she was struck by what sounded like an irresistible elevator pitch. “Everything came together for me in that one sentence,” she said. “The fact that it was sheep rather than some other animal felt so resonant.”
Doran spent years trying to extricate the book from a complicated rights situation, and years more turning it into a movie. The result, opening Friday, is “The Sheep Detectives,” which features Nicholas Braun and Emma Thompson as humans, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Patrick Stewart and others giving voice to C.G.I. sheep stirred from their customary ruminations by the death of their shepherd, George (Hugh Jackman).
The film, rated PG, is an Agatha Christie-lite mystery with eccentric suspects, a comically bumbling cop (Braun) and a passel of ovine investigators. It’s also a coming-of-age story about growing up and losing your innocence that might have a “Bambi”-like resonance for children. The movie’s sheep have a way of erasing unpleasant things from their minds — they believe, for instance, that instead of dying, they just turn into clouds — but learn that death is an inextricable part of life.
“In some ways, the most important character is Mopple, the sheep played by Chris O’Dowd,” the screenwriter, Craig Mazin, said in a video interview. “He has a defect — he does not know how to forget — and he’s been carrying his memories all alone.”
“Three Bags Full” is an adult novel that includes grown-up themes like drugs and suicide. In adapting it for a younger audience, Mazin toned down its darker elements, changed its ending, and — for help in writing about death — consulted a book by Fred Rogers, TV’s Mister Rogers, about how to talk to children about difficult subjects.
The journey from book to film has been long and circuitous. “Three Bags Full” was written by Leonie Swann, then a 20-something German doctoral student studying English literature. Distracting herself from her unwritten dissertation, on the topic of “the animal point of view in fiction,” she began a short story “playing around with the idea of sheep detectives,” she said. “And I realized it was more like a novel, and it wasn’t the worst novel I’d ever seen.”
Why sheep? “I wasn’t someone who was thinking about sheep all the time,” Swann, who lives in the English countryside and has a dog named Ezra Hound, said in a video interview. Yet they have always hovered on the periphery of her life.
There was a friendly sheep that she used to see on her way to school. There was an irate ram that once chased her through the streets of a Bavarian village. And there were thousands and thousands of sheep in the fields of Ireland, where she lived for a time. “There were so many of them, and you could tell there was a lot of personality behind them,” she said.
A book in which sheep are stirred to action had to be a mystery, she said, to motivate the main characters. “In a lot of other stories, you would have trouble making a sheep realize there’s a story there,” she said. “They would just keep grazing. But murder is an existential problem that speaks to sheep as well as humans.”
Swann (the name is a pseudonym; she has never publicly disclosed her real name) found a literary agent, Astrid Poppenhusen, who brought her manuscript to market. Published in 2005, the book was translated into 30 languages and ended up spending three and a half years on German best-seller lists. (The German title is “Glennkill,” after the village in which it takes place.) Other novels followed, including a sheep-centric sequel, “Big Bad Wool,” but Swann never finished her dissertation.
Doran, the producer, read the book — now published in the United States by Soho Press, along with four other Swann novels — soon after hearing about it. She was determined to make it into a movie. Whenever she told anyone about the idea, she said, she had them at “sheep.”
The director, Kyle Balda (whose credits include “Minions”), was so excited when he first read the script, in 2022, that “I immediately drove out to a sheep farm” near his house in Oregon, he said in a video interview. “Very instantly I could see the behavior of the sheep, their different personalities. I learned very quickly that there are more varieties of sheep than dogs.”
How to make the sheep look realistic, and how to strike the proper balance between their inherent sheep-iness and their human-esque emotions were important questions the filmmakers grappled with.
It was essential that “the sheep in this world are sheep” rather than humans in sheep’s clothing, Balda said. “It’s not the kind of story where they are partnered with humans and talking to each other.”
That means that like real sheep, the movie sheep have short attention spans. They’re afraid to cross the road. “They don’t drive cars; they don’t wear pants; they’re not joke characters saying things like, ‘This grass would taste better with a little ranch dressing,’” Doran said.
And whenever they speak, their words register to humans as bleating, the way the adult speech in “Peanuts” cartoons sounds like trombone-y gibberish to Charlie Brown and his friends.
Lily, the leader of the flock, is played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. It is not her first time voicing an animal in a movie: She has played, among other creatures, an ant in “A Bug’s Life” and a horse in “Animal Farm.” “When I read the script, I thought, ‘Wow, this is so weird,’” she said in a video interview. “It’s not derivative of anything else.”
Lily is unquestionably not a person; among other things, like a real sheep, she has a relatively immobile face set off by lively ears. “But her journey is a human journey where she realizes certain things about life she didn’t understand,” Louis-Dreyfus said. “There’s also the question of being a leader, and how to do that when you’re questioning your own point of view.”
Nicholas Braun took easily to the role of Officer Tim, the inept constable charged with solving the shepherd’s murder.
“The part was a little Greg-adjacent in the beginning, and I don’t really want to play too many Gregs,” Braun said via video, referring to Cousin Greg, his hapless punching bag of a character in the TV drama “Succession.”
“I’m post-Greg,” he said.
It takes Officer Tim some time to notice that the neighborhood sheep might be actively helping him tackle the case. But Braun said that unlike Greg, who is stuck in perpetual ineptitude, Tim gets to grow into a braver and more assertive person, a take-charge romantic hero — much the way the sheep are forced into action from their default position of “just forgetting about it and moving on and going back to eating grass,” he said.
Braun mused for a bit about other potential animal detectives — horses, say, or cows — but concluded that the sheep in the film were just right for the job. He predicted that the movie would change people’s perception of sheep, much the way “Toy Story” made them “look at their toys, or their kids’ toys, differently.”
“I don’t think people are going to be eating as much lamb after this,” he said.,
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