Social media in a frenzy as amazing Olympic Baseball Tournament comes to a close

A fantastic Olympic Baseball Tournament came to an emotional end on Saturday with the medal matches - Japan and the United States for gold and the Dominican Republic and Korea for bronze - in Yokohama Baseball Stadium generating plenty of traction across social media.

While the WBSC social media platforms took off during both the softball and baseball tournaments at the Olympic Games with followings on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram passing 500,000, 90,000 and 60,000 respectively while YouTube subscribers passed the 140,000 mark, there was also plenty going on from fans, leagues and clubs around the social media world.

After Japan clinched a hard fought gold medal, USA’s players showed respect to the Olympic champions with one image in particular going viral - a hug between Masahiro Tanaka and Todd Frazier who were teammates at the New York Yankees.

While medallists across all the three teams received plenty of plaudits from their clubs and fans around the world.

What could be better than having one Olympic medalist in your organization? Having two. The Seattle Mariners congratulated Eric Filia (USA) and Julio Rodríguez (Dominican Republic) for their Olympic medals.

For some athletes, just having the privilege to have the Olympic experience is the biggest prize they can have. Nick Rickles from Team Israel reflected on it on this Instagram post.

While Tanaka, arguably one of the most famous Japanese pitchers ever, thanked everyone who supported the Japanese National Team during these difficult times of the Covid pandemic.

Since some of the USA Baseball team members play in the Japan professional league (NPB), There were quite a few joint Samurai Japan and USA pics doing the rounds.

While another key part of the game are the umpires. The Chinese Professional Baseball League celebrated the principal umpire for the Gold Medal Game, who represented their important league.

Eddy Alvarez, just the sixth person to win a medal in a Winter and Summer Olympic Games, also had plenty of reasons to celebrate.

While not directly Olympic baseball related, it was nice to see US Softball Olympic silver medallist Cat Osterman being invited by the Houston Astros to do the ceremonial first pitch at one of the team's home games.