This column has been six weeks in the making, but I suffered from a case of the Knoblauchs.

The Knoblauchs? Yes, former major league second baseman Chuck Knoblauch, an all-star with a World Series ring, mysteriously forgot how to throw to first base. Ask any baseball person and you will be told that the throw from second to first is the easiest in baseball. Heck, I played second base for a stretch — so how hard could it be?

But poor Chuck Knoblauch. He threw left of the first baseman, into the dugout — both dugouts — and even pelted an ESPN anchorman’s mother with an errant throw. She was more than 10 rows up in the stands.

Others might call it a case of the Wohlers, the one-time Atlanta Braves closing pitcher who went to the mound one day and couldn’t throw a strike. Not only could he not throw a strike, he couldn’t throw within a ZIP code of a strike.

Call it what you will. Surely it affects people in every walk of life and for the past six weeks, I’ve had the Knoblauchs.

It started when I moved from my former position at The Vicksburg Post, sports editor, to editor of the Web edition. I got so wrapped up in the vastness of this new world — the Internet — and how it is driving life as we know it, I lost sight of words, how to use them and even the joy of watching them rolling off the printing press. Everyone should see a press run at least once in their lives. I’m fortunate enough to have seen many.

The new world, my new world, is running our Web site, trying to add as much to the printed product as possible. We do not want to replace our lifeblood — the printed word — but we want to enhance our services to anyone wanting to know what’s what about Vicksburg. Immediate and depth are our bywords. Learning has proven difficult at times, as with most new endeavors, so maybe that is as much to blame as the Knoblauchs.

One of the suggestions when the bosses agreed to move me a free-throw away from my former desk into an office was that I would continue writing a weekly column. But they moved me to this place, where is this place? The Sunday B section?

For the last eight years I have been stuck on the bottom of Thursday’s Sports section, usually getting trampled on by some football player’s cleats or dunked on by a Vicksburg High basketball player; always looking up. But this, this is nice. I almost feel like George Jefferson way up here looking out over things. And “South,” how appropriate.

This Yankee-born keyboard pusher may never be considered a Southerner by many, but in less than two years I will have spent one more day of my life in the South than I did in New York. I renounced any remaining allegiances to that state in 2000 with Hillary Clinton’s election to the U.S. Senate.

Long before then, though, I found a home in the South. Some cosmic answer lies beyond the imagination as to why, of all the places on Earth, would a teen who grew up a train ride from the biggest city in America choose Hattiesburg, Mississippi, for college. More vexing is that all three of my siblings now live below the Mason-Dixon Line — an entire family tree altered forever all because… I really don’t know, but something guided me to the South as something guided me to this section on Sundays.

I knew I had to write this before leaving to see one of those brothers in Chattanooga. I had no inspiration. I had the Knoblauchs bad.

On Saturday, Brian, my oldest brother, his wife Melisa, a Hattiesburg girl, and their angelic 7-year-old daughter Rian will head out to pick out a Christmas tree. The thought of it knocks me down. Christmas through a child’s eye — doesn’t happen often, but when it does, well, that’s all the inspiration one needs.

I’m in the South now and have no plans on leaving any time soon. Hopefully, they won’t force me from this perch. Movin’ on up. The Big Leagues.

Sean P. Murphy is Web editor of The Vicksburg Post. Write to him at Box 821668, Vicksburg, MS 39182, or e-mail smurphy@vicksburgpost.com..