“Hello! Welcome to [name of big warehouse store]! Would you like to try our [name of product]?”

I work weekends as Free Sample Girl at one of the big warehouse stores, so you can imagine how many times I say that a day. My job is to sell you whatever product is on my cart, and more often than not, I’m pretty good at it. If you have things in your shopping cart already, I can take a quick glance in and see if I can relate the product I’m sampling to what’s in your cart.

The point is, I can sell food products REALLY well. So why am I telling you this?

The AFC and NFC Championship games were on Sunday. So the store was really slow. Not many people wanted to try my red grapefruit.

It gave me time to think, and I thought to myself, “If the White Sox were a product in this store, how would I sell them? Especially this year.”

We lost Mark Buehrle, we traded Carlos Quentin, and we have at least two players (I will be kind and not name specific players) who had awful seasons last year. We don’t have much to look forward to. So how could I sell the White Sox to people?

Well, for starters, I could sell the park. U.S. Cellular Field is a great stadium. My view has never been blocked, even when I was sitting waaaaaaaaaaay up at the top on Opening Day 2010. Whether the team is amazing or completely awful, you will always have a good view, even if you don’t always want it.

The food at U.S. Cellular is great too. How can you go wrong with a churro or elotes? You can’t! Those are just delicious and wonderful. And there’s that nacho helmet. That thing fed three people the first time I had it. And you get a souvenir helmet! Fun and deliciousness for the whole family.

But I’m not selling the park. Yes, it’s a great place to see two teams play baseball. But I’m selling the White Sox.

Everyone knows what kind of team we’re dealing with. We lost the one player I thought would be a White Sox until he retired (although I will always love you, Mark Buehrle). There are huge contracts that are proving to be completely awful. But there are some bright spots to look forward to.

We have a new manager. I will admit that I never got to see Robin Ventura play. I started watching baseball on a regular basis (rather than being forced to watch since no one would change the station) after I graduated high school in 2004. But from what I’ve heard from fans who saw him, he was a great player. I’ve read things about him that prove that point to me. He’s never managed before, so it will be an interesting season to watch to see how this team works with him in charge.

I’ve heard that under Ventura’s guidance, we may see a different Brent Morel. We all saw him start breaking out last season. With Ventura managing, it’s entirely possible that this will be an even better season for Morel. Since I’m unsure of how this season will progress for him, I’m interested to see how it goes.

We still have Paul Konerko. I shouldn’t have to elaborate. It’s Paulie.

We have young kids coming up on our pitching staff. It’s entirely possible that they’re going to be phenomenal. This is a toss-up season, so we have the chance to see kids develop into stars. We still have Don Cooper as our pitching coach, remember? If he can’t coach these kids into great players, there’s probably no hope for them. Let’s see what these kids and Coop can do.

Jeff Manto is our new hitting coach. The entire time Greg Walker was here, I heard nothing but complaints at how horrible the Sox are at hitting. There’s someone new. There’s a different style of coaching. Do you know what this means? There’s the possibility that those unnamed players from before with awful season MIGHT ACTUALLY HIT! JOY!

And the one thing on this list that makes me sad: AJ Pierzynski is in his last year of his contract. With the direction the club may be going in, this could be his last season as a White Sox. So soak him in, Sox fan. Being the rabid AJ fan that I am, I will be doing just that.

See, Sox fans? We have some things to look forward to. I hope I’ve sold you a little on this team.

Now it’s your turn: how would you sell this team to a potential customer?