I heard a comedian talk about how when we were kids we had to get the Sears magazine and go to the bra section. But kids nowadays, with the internet, don’t know how easy they have it. They can just go to Sears.com.
It was in use when I was in high school (ca 1970).
Just because “ballin’” meant sex before does not meant it means that now.
A “baller” is a high class member of a ghetto or other poor area. They have lots of cash to throw around, and walk around confidently. Maybe they have a basketball contract, or maybe they deal drugs, either way, they’re a baller. (the fact that they get a lot of sex is part of the deal but not related to the word)
Back in ~1971, practically anyone I knew would have told you that ‘balling’ meant fucking. But I haven’t heard it used like that in 35-40 years.
Never heard of it.
I ran across the term in Pohl’s Starburst in the mid-80s.
Saw this on reddit and thought of this thread (sfw)
1990: Sir Mix-a-lot’s protégé, Kid Sensation released Seatown Ballers:
No one seems to have even noticed my post with the correct definition. As you can see from the kids shirt, it has little to do with sex. The cat is high status for whatever reason (he’s a baller!), and the stack of cash is a symbol of his wealth.
Jerry Williams, Jr.
The older slang usage is for “fucking,” and that’s how I’ve always thought of it, but I’ve heard it used more recently as high praise, as in, “That movie was just balling.”
Am I the only one who associates “balling” with trains?
It may be because even when I was young, I like to read stories about Casey Jones and other old-time railroad men. If you’re balling on a train, you’re going very fast–probably faster than you should be.
Short for “cannonballing,” perhaps?
The “high praise” or “wonderfull” meaning goes back to at least the early 1950s in print.
Probably not short for cannonballing.
“Balling the Jack” was a song from 1913. It was about a dance step. It also meant “to run away.” Whether the song coined the phrase or it existed previously is unknown. It also meant to go fast(as referring to a train).
In the context of driving trains at full speed (or excessive speed), the word that I knew of was “highballing”.
ETA: Definition #2 here.
I’ve heard my father use highballing to mean “driving very exceedingly quickly.”
I still had no idea that balling meant “having sex” until this thread, and I’m 27 and usually hip to older phrases and meanings.
I thought of “The Wabash Cannonball” (which mentioned “highball” in the lyrics, actually), along with "Cannon Ball Baker"as reasons for that speculation…although I’ll freely admit don’t know crap about trains. 
More on the Cannonball Express: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2875/who-was-the-real-casey-jones
I’m 41, and that’s what I associate the term “balling” with today, but I vaguely remember it being slang for sex back when I was an adolescent. Not a polite term, but not a particularly obscene one either, i.e., if the show “Two and a Half Men” had been on the late 1970s - early 1980s, the term would probably have been used ad nauseam.