You need "lo" before "cmari'e".

Also, "le" should probably be "lo". Have you read about xorlo? "le" isn't really equivalent to "the".

I have read about xorlo. As I understand it, {le bolci} means "the particular ball that I have in mind..."

Yes, that's correct. However, it's not really equivalent to "the". If you've never studied a language without articles, I would highly suggest it. You'll quickly realize that the distinction is very, very rarely important, so "lo" is usually best.

I generally only use "le" and friends when I'm leaving out relevant information and requiring the listener to make some assumption about what I'm talking about.

For example, I might say "mi klama le zdani" to mean "mi klama lo zdani be mi".

In this case, it is highly unlikely that the specific ball really matters. If you just said this out of context, it would be assumed that the ball doesn't matter to much. And if you were previously talking about a specific ball, the listener would probably know that this one is the same one. My philosophy is that "le" should really only be used when it's necessary to make a semantic distinction that would change the listener's understanding of the sentence.

I speak Russian (it's actually my first language, but my English is much better due to frequency of use).

It still strikes me as weird to use {lo} when I could have used {le}. Ah, well; I'm still learning lojban, so maybe the weirdness will go away eventually.