Lets see Youre shooting as ISO 1250, with an f/stop of 2.8 and speed of 1/100. At the focal length youre using (18mm), you can lower your speed to 1/20 and get the same exposure at ISO 200, which would take care of the noise. If your lens has VR, then you could probably use an even slower shutter speed (and lower your ISO correspondingly). The setting of 2.8 is good for the selective focus that youre trying to do, but you need either to select the autofocus point at the left of the screen (which would then be over the ball in portrait orientation), or switch to manual focus and even use the live-view focus. Assuming the ball itself is white, you could also do a custom-colour balance off the ball itself, and then youd get much less colour adjustment to make.
If you were already at the minimum focusing distance of your lens, then the only way to get the ball into focus would be to back up until the ball is in focus at the minimum distance. Then youd crop the result to get the framing you want.
I agree with the other posters that the second image would benefit from a higher vantage point, so that you can see more of the ball, while still keeping the two people in the middle-background in the picture.
As for the posters who didnt like the image grow up. The concept of the poster was good, and some technical help will allow the OP to get the effect they were going for. This is, after all, the beginners forum and this is where we would expect people to post their attempts to see what they can improve.