So...After doing some more research, as a friend of mine always says “Google is your friend”. I found several (read that as three that I read) articles about leucistic animals. Not searching for just ball pythons helped. They all stated that it doesn’t always effect the color of the whole animal. So...mystery solved. I also read about chimeras and in many animals they aren’t as uncommon as once thought, even in humans. So, that’s also a possibility in some cases. Guess I’ll have to keep looking for the golden ball.
But, similar to Super Fires that tend to throw babies with more yellow, possibly mine have more wild type color patches. I guess I have that going for me!