Oh and for the pick up part - just add an image point to your character and then move the ball to that image point when the character is within a few pixels of the ball. To release the ball you will need to have some sort of interaction...such as a touch or whatever that you will use to toggle the "holding" state to untrue and use a physics impulse to throw the ball in whatever direction you want.
If this is unclear, I can make a quick example for you later.
Hey man, thank you so much for taking your time to explain this! ^_^
I couldnt ask you for a capx, you have already taken your time to answer me here, though i dont think i have seen any tutorial for this as i have been searching for it for hours (or i just missed it...)
So perhaps if you do an example, it can be up in the tutorial section for others to learn ^_^
Thank you for your time.