Friction only works with terrain btw, and it's not very good.
If you want to tweak the physics attributes you need to use the physics lua commands.
SetObjectDamping( objectId, mv, rv )
That's the command you probably want to play around with.
Attach a script to the ball and in the _init function put:
SetObjectDamping( g_Entity[ e ].obj, 0.1, 0.1 )
Try it and see the effect.
Then tweak the values to suit, the values are 0 to 1, 1 means that the object will probably not move at all, 0 means free movement.
First value is is sort of like air friction, second is sort of like rolling resistance.
Been there, done that, got all the T-Shirts!