Your ballhead is probably the one-knob kind. You need the 2 knob kind - 1 to release the ball, 1 to pan.
If you're not very critical, what I usually do is to just handhold and twist my body to take pictures, without moving my feet. Make sure that there's plenty of overlap and make sure you're using the same exposure for it. That's where M mode comes in handy. I use a free, pretty simple software called The Panorama Factory by Smoky City Design. Mine is v2.4 but there probably are newer versions of it online now. Otherwise, I think Photoshop can also do stitching.
K, probably way too much info there. You just asking about the ballhead right? =P