2020 started like most other years. People left their houses. They went to work. They went to the store without being told, "don't forget your mask." And then something funny happened. Not ha-ha funny, the other kind of funny. Some guy in China coughed. That cough led to some other guy coughing. Next thing you knew, we were being quarantined. Shut up in our houses. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do.

Or was there something to do? Could we? Would there be somehow? Is it possible?

The boys started talking. Could we figure out a way to play Strato from our various locales? We knew that Strato had developed an online version of the game since we last played. Mike and Joe being the most technologically savvy members of the group were elected to investigate how we could make that version work for us. It was going to happen. It took a global pandemic to make it happen, but Strato was going to make its long-awaited comeback.

Mike and Joe spent a couple of weeks trying to figure out how to play Strato's digital game. After a few starts and stops and much frustration it was determined that that version of the game was just not going to work for us. In order for us to enjoy the game we love we would have to play the game we love. Paper, pens, actual cards, charts and dice. But how? Enter Zoom.

Video conference calls were taking off during the quarantine with Zoom leading the way. We could use Zoom to play face-to-face games. An online dice rolling website was found. Through screen sharing we could pretty much emulate the board game.

Mike, Dan, Joe, Eugene, John and Frank were all willing to give it a go. Each player would have to purchase their own set of cards so they'd have a copy of every team. As we had done in 21st Century Strato we again decided to play a season from our youth. The 1973 season was agreed upon.

On April 28, 2020, the six members of 2020 Strato got together on a Zoom conference call and held the first-ever virtual Strato draft. Joe had the first pick and took Joe Morgan with the league's first draft pick. 149 picks later, Eugene chose Bob Bailey with the final selection. The rosters were set. All that was left was to play the games.