By Alex Trickett BBC Sport Online

The teams:

Baseball: Braves
American Football: Falcons
Basketball: Hawks
Ice Hockey: Thrashers

A key corporate base in the south, Atlanta has money, avid sports fans and a full-set of professional team franchises.

Pitching in: Glavine joined Braves as a rookie

The Braves have been one of baseball's most consistent teams in recent years, while the Falcons have charted a less glorious path in the NFL.

Basketball's Hawks are struggling to fill the huge void left by 7-foot centre Dikembe Mutombo - who moved to Philadelphia in 2000.

And the Thrashers are similarly thrashing away, out of play-off contention, in the NHL.

The venue:

The 2002 host of college basketball's Final Four, Atlanta's Georgia Dome has firmly established itself as one of the premier indoor stadiums in America.

Georgia Dome has twice hosted the Super Bowl

It is the 71,149-seater home of the Falcons and has hosted prominent sporting events such as the 1996 Summer Olympics and Super Bowls XXVIII and XXXIV.

The latter of those NFL showdowns, which took place in January 2000, was particularly memorable.

Neither St Louis nor the Tennessee Titans had ever been in the big game before and both adjusted well to the intense pressure.

At 16-16, the game came down to the last two minutes and Rams quarterback Kurt Warner sealed his MVP award by connecting with Isaac Bruce for the decisive touchdown.

The legend:

One of the most influential black athletes in history, Hank Aaron excelled in the face of extreme racial prejudice and was frequently abused by white fans.

Aaron has hit more MLB homers than anyone else

If Jackie Robinson paved the way for black players to join the MLB, "Hammerin' Hank" punctuated their arrival by breaking Babe Ruth's career home run mark.

Shrugging off daily threats on his life, Aaron surpassed Ruth on 8 April 1974 and went on to belt 755 homers, a mark that stands today.

He split his career between Milwaukee and the Atlanta Braves, picking up the National League MVP award in 1957 and appearing in 24 all-star games.

Men about town:

Pitching - not batting - wins World Series and rarely has any team had a pair of starters as durable and dependable as Atlanta's Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine.

Maddux is a certainty to join the Hall of Fame

Glavine joined the Braves as a rookie in 1987 and has won 224 games since at an impressive ERA of 3.4.

He helped Atlanta to their first World Series victory in 38 years in 1995 and was duly voted the finals MVP.

A Chicago Cub for his first seven seasons, Maddux has been Atlanta's top pitcher for years.

He boasts an incredible ERA of 2.84 and scooped an unprecedented four straight Cy Young awards between 1992 and 1995.

Both pitchers are bound for the Cooperstown Hall of Fame.