He financed his education at Antioch College by planting corn on borrowed land and held jobs during his two years there as a telephone linesman, a construction worker, and a factory employee.

When he sold a story to a pulp magazine for $50, he quit to become a freelance writer, and spent a year writing paperback fiction before returning to journalism, this time for the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

As a columnist in the Pioneer Press, Ball was critical of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democratic-majority in Congress, but he also opposed isolationism in foreign policy.

[5] After being sworn in on October 14, 1940, Ball stunned isolationist Republicans in his first speech on the Senate floor, calling for the United States to aid Britain as "a barrier between us and whatever designs Hitler and his allies may have on this continent".

In the 1944 U.S. presidential election, Ball refused to support Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey, the governor of New York, and instead crossed party lines to endorse Franklin Roosevelt.

Ball denounced Dewey for making his position on foreign policy so unclear that both isolationists and internationalists "could find comfort and support in what he said".

[6] In 1948, Ball was soundly defeated for Senate reelection by Minneapolis Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey, a 37-year-old liberal Democrat and civil rights advocate.

Three years later, Ball died at the Bethesda Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Chevy Chase, Maryland, at the age of 88 after suffering a stroke.