Quick answer: In Google Doodle Baseball, the peanut pitcher’s hat tells you the pitch. White is a straight, normal pitch. Blue is a slow lob, green spirals, yellow zig-zags, purple vanishes before the plate and red is the fastball. That’s all six. There is no black hat: the game’s code holds exactly six pitch types.
By Ashish Sharma · Updated November 3, 2026 · How we tested: we read the Doodle’s own game code on google.com for pitch speeds, paths, the pitch order and the hit rules. Then we ran a timing bot on the live game for more than 480 logged swings, including full games and the hidden 10-strike mode.
In Short
- Six hats, six pitches: white, blue, green, yellow, purple, red. No black hat exists.
- Order: only white for 2 pitches, then blue and green, then yellow and purple from pitch 6, then red from pitch 13.
- Same hat = same pitch: the hat only swaps when the pitch type changes.
- 3 strikes total: no catches, no fouls, no outs. Any contact is a hit.
Doodle Baseball is the Fourth of July 2019 Google Doodle. You play ballpark food batting against peanut pitchers. It’s still free on Google’s Doodle page. Most guides list the hat colors from memory and disagree on speeds; one even calls yellow “fast”, though it’s slower than white. This page gives the values straight from the game.
What does each hat color mean in Google Doodle Baseball?
Each hat color is one fixed pitch type with its own speed and path. The speeds below are the ball speeds set in the code, so you can compare them directly: red is almost twice as fast as white, and blue is less than half white’s speed.
| Hat | Pitch | Speed | First possible | How to hit it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| White | Straight, normal pitch | 33 | Pitch 1 | Your baseline timing |
| Blue | Lob that rises, then drops in | 15 (slowest) | Pitch 3 | Wait. Most misses are early swings |
| Green | Corkscrew spiral | 18 | Pitch 3 | Ignore the spin and time it to the plate |
| Yellow | Zig-zags side to side | 26 | Pitch 6 | A bit later than white |
| Purple | Fades as it flies, invisible for the last 30% | 28 | Pitch 6 | Swing on white-like timing, not on sight |
| Red | Straight fastball | 60 (fastest) | Pitch 13 | Start the swing as it leaves the hand |
The code adds pitches to a pool as the game goes on. After pitch 2 it adds blue and green, after pitch 5 yellow and purple, and after pitch 12 red. After pitch 15 it adds another green, yellow and purple, and after pitch 30 a second red. From then on the pool holds 10 entries, so red is 20% of pitches and white only 10%. That’s why long games feel harder: speed never changes, but the mix does.
Is there a black hat in Doodle Baseball?
No. The game has one pitch table with six entries, one hat sprite for each, and nothing else. Nothing in the code unlocks a seventh pitch at any score, so black hat clips on YouTube are edits or modded copies. Be careful with sites that promise a “black hat unlock” download.
How do you play Google Doodle Baseball?
Press play, then click or tap the bat button, or press Space, as each pitch reaches the plate. You keep batting until you get three strikes. The game has no innings and no target score.
- Strikes count for the whole game. You get three in total, not three per batter. A miss, a pitch you let go by, or a swing timed far too early or late each add one.
- No catches, no fouls. Any contact is a hit. Fielders only pick up the ball, which stops the runners.
- Home run: a ball that lands more than 92 m (about 302 ft) out. The game shows the distance in feet. Our 151 logged home runs ranged from 416 ft to 2,675 ft, the longest off a red fastball.
- Base running is automatic. Runners move one base about every 1.05 seconds while the ball is loose. In 196 logged hits that didn’t score anyone, we got 122 singles, 74 doubles and no triples.
- Cherries are worth two. The 29 batters come up in a shuffled order without repeats. When the cherries cross home plate, the code adds 2 runs.
Which pitches are easiest to hit for a home run?
Red is the hardest pitch to touch but the easiest to turn into a home run. Yellow has the smallest home run window. The code turns a fast, well-timed hit into a line drive and a weak one into a grounder. The windows below are worked out from the game’s speeds. Our bot’s results matched them on every hat.
| Hat | Hit window (each side) | Home run window (each side) | Bot check (home runs at the edge) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blue | 200 ms | 31 ms | 8/8 inside, 0/7 just outside |
| Green | 167 ms | 20 ms | 8/14 at the edge |
| Yellow | 115 ms | 14 ms | 8/13 at the edge |
| Purple | 107 ms | 18 ms | 1/8 just outside |
| White | 91 ms | 25 ms | 3/8 at the edge |
| Red | 50 ms | 32 ms | 16/16 inside, 0/2 just outside |
Slow pitches get a bigger power boost (2.0x for blue, 1.7x for green), but an incoming fastball carries much more speed off the bat. So on red, most contact goes deep. On blue, you’ll usually make contact, but most of those hits are grounders unless you time it almost exactly.
How do you get a higher score?
Read the hat, swing at everything, and treat red as the pitch that ends games. Across three full games with near-perfect timing, our bot scored 64, 75 and 74 runs, and 8 of its 9 strikes came on red.
- Open the Doodle. Open the Fourth of July 2019 Doodle on doodles.google or the game file on google.com and press play.
- Read the hat before each pitch. A new hat color means a new pitch type. If the hat stays the same, the same pitch is coming again.
- Press a beat early. The bat checks for contact 84 ms after you click, tap or press Space, so start the swing just before the ball reaches the plate.
- Wait on blue and green. Blue (speed 15) and green (speed 18) are the slowest pitches. Let them come all the way in, because early swings are what waste strikes.
- Commit early on red. Red is a speed-60 fastball with only about 50 ms each side to make contact. Start your swing as soon as the peanut lets go.
- Swing at everything near the plate. Letting a pitch go by is a strike too, and any contact at all is a hit.
Want to play the extra mode? Open the game file with &mode=1 on the end of the link. It’s a hidden home run derby. In our test game, 7 home runs counted, every other hit became a strike, and the game ended on strike 10.
Play similar free on Gipcus
Gipcus has no baseball game yet, but these use the same one-button timing skill, and we checked that all three load:
- Cricket 2022: time each shot against real bowling types.
- Street Cricket: quick tap-to-bat cricket that works on phones.
- Cricket Hero: arcade batting with power shots.
More Google Doodle games: Google Doodle Cricket timing for sixes, the Google Snake loop pattern to win, all 23 Google Snake modes and Google Minesweeper strategy. For more quick games, see our 5-minute browser games for a lunch break, or move on to batting with how to hit sixes in browser cricket games and the best free cricket games online.
FAQ
Is there a black hat in Google Doodle Baseball?
No. The Doodle’s code has exactly six pitch types and six hat sprites: white, blue, green, yellow, purple and red. Black hat videos are edits or mods, and no setting or score unlocks one.
What does the red hat mean in Doodle Baseball?
Red is the fastball, the quickest pitch at speed 60, almost twice the white pitch. It joins the mix from pitch 13. You get only about 50 ms each side to make contact, but any decent contact usually goes for a home run.
Can you get a triple in Google Doodle Baseball?
Not in our testing. The code has no hard cap, because runners keep moving one base about every 1.05 seconds while the ball is loose. But in 196 logged hits that didn’t score anyone, we saw 122 singles, 74 doubles and no triples.
How many strikes do you get in Doodle Baseball?
Three for the whole game, not three per batter. Every miss, every pitch you let go by and every badly timed swing adds a strike. The third strike ends the game.
Can you get caught out in Google Doodle Baseball?
No. Any contact is a hit. Fielders only pick the ball up and stop the runners. Strikes are the only way the game ends.
Does Google Doodle Baseball have a home run derby mode?
Yes, but it’s hidden. Open the Doodle’s game file with ?mode=1 on the end (july4th19.html?mode=1) and you get 10 strikes instead of 3. Only home runs count, and any other hit counts as a strike.
Sources: the Fourth of July 2019 Doodle on doodles.google and its game file at google.com. From that code we read the pitch table (speeds, paths, power), the pitch order, the 3-strike and 10-strike limits, the 92 m home run line, base running and the cherries’ bonus. We then checked them with a timing bot on November 3, 2026. Millisecond windows are worked out from the game’s speeds, not timed with a stopwatch. For a hat list based on play, see USA Today’s 2019 write-up.
About the author: Ashish Sharma runs Gipcus and tests every arcade, sports and puzzle guide hands-on, from Google Snake and Doodle Cricket to the browser cricket games on Gipcus.
