In baseball the mood of the crowd can swing wildly with the action on the field.

Give the hometown crew a reason to stand up and holler, and the field can become deafening.

But a sharp play by the visitors can quickly deflate even the most fevered fans.

That’s similar to the mood of our community in regard to the future of economic development.

A couple of months ago, a surprise move by the county to yank funding from the city and county riled up both critics and supporters of the Natchez-Adams County Development Authority.

Accusations flew, and much talk was bantered around. But when the fastball landed in the catcher’s mitt with a pop to end the inning, the crowd grew silent.

With cooler heads prevailing, hopefully, community leaders can communicate their hopes about the EDA’s future.

To that end, we applaud the Natchez-Adams County Chamber of Commerce for stepping up and providing business leaders an opportunity to speak out through a membership survey.

The survey’s results are pretty telling. More than 98 percent of the respondents agreed that a professional EDA is needed. So let’s nix the talk of not having one.

But, more important, 67 percent said the current structure doesn’t work well. So we need to get our heads together on creating a better, more effective EDA.

Let’s not become bogged down in statistics or problems that we cannot overcome, but rather focus on the talents of the players we have on our team and figure out a way to organize those players to be a solid, cohesive team — for today, tomorrow and the years to come.