Fear of a Pink Ball

We seem to have reached another child development crossroad with young Josh. He has a small collection of toys that we keep in a sort of mini pup tent on the second floor. Among them is an assortment of plastic balls of the kind you find in child play areas and pizza parlors. Josh enjoys bouncing them and playing catch with his pop.

Also among these toys is a small pink rubber basketball. He has never really shown it much interest and it tends to go ignored most of the time. I pulled it out of his tent during a little father-son play session the other day and showed it to him thinking he might want to play catch. To my surprise he immediately burst into tears the moment I showed him the ball. A bit confused, I tried to hand the ball to him but he only became more agitated, to the point of shaking and recoiling from the seemingly harmless toy.

I put the ball away and he eventually calmed down. The next day, I showed him the ball again thinking that his previous reaction my have been a fluke or general moodiness. Again the same reaction--wide-eyed toddler terror.

I tried to look up this sort of unexplained fear of inanimate objects online without much luck. I found a few articles suggesting that his age is about right for developing fear of certain things, usually strangers or fear of being left alone. Nothing about little pink basketballs. For now I have hidden the ball so as not to agitate the little guy further, but I would really like to figure this one out.