Matt Colie writes:

A client had been attempting the same thing. He had lost at least an
half dozen before he saw my hammer. He had been standing on the deck
playing "drop and catch". The sound places were not a problem, but the
really soft places would cause so little rebound that he could not field
the ball and it would often escape. He was also have some accuracy
issues.

If we just had a technology to keep a bouncing ball from going overboard.

Like a picture-hanging eye and some elastic cord from the sewing notions.