hiding a body

I want to hide a body, it's a ball one of my characters will throw. I don't want it waiting around, I want to hide it until it's time to throw it. Right now, I put it way out of the scene and do this:

sceneMgr->getEntity("ball")->setVisible(false);
mScene->findBody("ball")->putToSleep();

Then when it's time to use it, I move it to the appropriate place and do this:

sceneMgr->getEntity("ball")->setVisible(true);
mScene->findBody("ball")->wakeUp();

Is there a better way to do it?

No that's fine. You may want to put it in non-collision group when hiding just in case someone trips over the invisible sphere.

My advice for the Ogre side:
If you're going to hide more objects ( >= 2 ) i would detach entity from the scenenode and the scenenode from the root scenenode since non visible objects have CPU overhead in Ogre.

If your going to go that extent, you may as well delete it and create it when needed.

It just depends how long the ball is invisible for.