Three and a half hours before first pitch, I got out of my car and spotted an army tailgating in Lot E. Not long after, my mind wandered back to better days for the Sox.

You’d never know it by looking at the smiling faces of tailgaters in the parking lot, but the Sox are coming off a historically awful campaign where they finished with an MLB record 121 losses.

“It’s surreal,” Rose said.

"It's going to be exciting,” Anderson said of his return game.

“I tell myself I'm here for a reason; I'm doing this for a reason,” Burke said.

“Honestly, no,” Robert said of if he expected to be back.

The coming months on the South Side might not be a barrel of fun.