Shaw Park, GA; A 5-year-old may not have a clue what "cutting-edge" means -- as sharp as the sharpy side of a knife, maybe -- but the youngest baseball players at Shaw Park in east Cobb County will be cutting-edge when they play the season opener today.

The Shetland League players, ages 4-6, will run, throw, hit and sometimes catch on the first artificial turf installed for general use at a metro Atlanta public park. The Dalton Parks and Recreation Department -- which has three soccer fields with artificial turf -- is the only other park system in Georgia to have installed plastic grass for league use. The Rockdale Miracle League, which conducts baseball games for children with handicaps, has one field with synthetic turf.

Use of artificial turf by recreation departments "is just picking up in the South," said Darby McCamy, vice president of marketing for Sporturf, the Dalton firm providing the turf used at Shaw Park.

But interest in artificial turf is growing here as recreation departments struggle to maintain heavily used athletic fields. McCamy this week fielded calls from officials with the Gwinnett and Fulton county parks and recreation departments. The Atlanta Bureau of Parks is considering replacing Bermuda grass with polyethylene at Central Park near the Atlanta Civic Center, the site of several festivals a year.

"We have to redo the football field [at Central Park], and we know it has to be able to take a beating," said landscape architect Cal Cormier.

Recreation departments in the West, which has been plagued by drought, and the Northeast, where the growing season is much shorter, have been installing artificial turf athletic fields for years.

"The city of New York alone will put in 30 fields a year," said Jim Savoca, vice president of sales for SRI Sports, the nation's largest builder of synthetic fields.

The company's business with schools and parks departments more than doubled in 2001. Last year, the firm installed artificial turf at 63 high schools and city parks.

In addition to the new field at Shaw Park, McEachern High School in Powder Springs will be the first Georgia high school to install artificial turf in its football stadium. The Cobb County School Board last month approved installation of turf at the stadium and an adjacent practice facility at a cost of $1.2 million. The money will come from the school's endowment fund.

At Shaw Park grass would not grow on the Shetland field.

"It was dusty; there would be potholes from where the kids were standing," said Rusty Gillespie, field improvement coordinator for the Shaw Park Baseball Association. "We tried to sod the field several times."

The volunteer association is paying $30,000 for 10,000 square feet of state-of-the-art fake grass. The turf was installed by crews from the Cobb County Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs Department.

Such partnerships are common -- the county often installs sod paid for by youth sports organizations -- but county officials are taking a special interest in this project. Maintaining the turf at county athletic fields, particularly heavily used soccer fields, is an ongoing hassle.

"With our turf problems, this may be a solution," said Jimmy Gisi, director of the Cobb parks department. "But right now, it's an expensive solution."

Installing an artificial turf field cost $6 to $8 a square foot. An artificial turf soccer field built last year in Dalton cost more than $200,000. Two other fields built four years ago using an earlier generation of turf cost about $300,000.

Maintaining the fields, however, cost virtually nothing. The Cobb parks department spends more than $4,300 per field a year maintaining the turf at the county's 24 soccer fields, $1,600 for a softball field and about $535 for a baseball field.

Despite the savings, a park system may not recoup the extra cost of artificial turf, said Ron Nix, director of the Dalton parks system.

"The biggest advantage is the availability of a more playable surface," Nix said. "You can play in the rain."

The turf installed at Shaw is a new generation, more durable than the real thing but looking much more like it. Early versions of synthetic grass featured pile of a half-inch. The newer turf has soft blades that resemble a robust form of Easter basket grass.

"The fibers don't grab cleats, they're more natural," McCamy said, explaining that knee injuries are unlikely to happen on the new turf.

Sand and rubber pellets are worked between the 2-inch blades, creating a softer surface than the fields found in Houston's Astrodome or Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium.

Gillespie, the Shaw Park field improvement coordinator, predicts the field will be much safer for the young players.

"There won't be any bad hops because of the potholes."