Make a image of the ball(without the face) and make it the texture in the particle.
That should work(make sure you use the same colors too)
To make it shorter turn down the lifetimeMS, to make it disappear more gradually do this:
colors[0] = "0.0 0.0 0.0 1.0";
colors[1] = "0.0 0.0 0.0 0.5";
sizes[0] = 0.35;
sizes[1] = 0.35;
times[0] = 0.5;
times[1] = 0.5;
or something along those lines.