There is nothing wrong with your column.....or the bearing.
What has happened is the ball bearing has worked it's way out of the plastic holder on the firewall end if the steering column tube. There is a plastic bearing retainer that the ball bearing is pressed into. The big snap ring around the metal collar on the end of the column holds all of thus in the column tube.
You should be able to just simply drive the ball bearing back into the plastic retainer and this should fix your problem. That is assuming the plastic retainer isn't broke.