Matt Stairs, always unappreciated and the 65th Greatest Royal of All-Time, blasted a mammoth home run off of mythical Dodger closer Jonathan Broxton in the top of the eighth inning tonight, giving the Phillies a 7-5 lead.

The English language is not sufficiently descriptive enough to accurately capture the majesty of Matt's homer. No, it is not still traveling, but it did knock a hole in the Dodger Stadium bleachers.

Pardon us if we rank this home run ahead of Alexis Gomez, who powered the Tigers to a 2-0 series lead back in the 2006 ALCS. Since the '06 postseason, Gomez has yet to appear in a Major League game, and has bounced from the Tiger, to the Rocky, to the Marlins' organization. Sure, Gomez reminded us all he was still alive in 2006, but the events since then have further reinforced his obscurity. The performance of the Tigers hasn't helped either.

No, this was a moment, a swing, a shot, to rival Johnny Damon's Grand Slam in Game Seven of the 2004 ALCS. Stairs's homer swung the series to a decisive 3-1 Phillies advantage and even managed a bit of sentimental flair, thanks to its pinch-hit angle and Stairs's age. According to the WPA data, before Stairs's homer, the Phillies had only a 45% chance of winning the game. When the ball left his bat, that figure went to 83%.

As "RoyalsRetro" has pointed out, the Royals could never quite decide if they wanted Stairs to be a bench-player or a full-time guy during his three seasons in Kansas City. Nevertheless, he was plainly one of the team's best hitters during that period:

Royals Leaders in Walks 2004-2006

Matt Stairs 140
David DeJesus 118
Emil Brown 107
Mike Sweeney 94
Mark Teahen 80

Royals Leaders in Home Runs 2004-2006
Mike Sweeney 51
Matt Stairs 39
John Buck 35
Emil Brown 32
Angel Berroa 28

Stairs is 35th in team history in home runs with those 39, despite just 1223 plate appearances in blue & white. But it wasn't just Kansas City that never really knew what it had in Stairs (who admittedly has his limitations afoot and with the glove). The man didn't see regular playing time until he was 29 years old. In spite of it all, Stairs has hit, to date, 254 career homers, good for 180th all-time. His next regular season bomb will tie him with an odd trio with a Royals-twist: John Olerud, John Mayberry and Kirk Gibson.

Tonight, we lift our glasses to you Matt Stairs. You made up for the struggles of fellow former Royal Chad Durbin. Then, and now.

Asif Ali Zardari, the new president of Pakistan, will visit China next week to negotiate a nuclear deal similar to the one between India and the US, an official said on Monday.

"Pakistan is already in touch with China for the nuclear deal to meet its energy crisis and the talks would start during Zardari's visit," an official said.

Zardari, who was elected president on Saturday, will be sworn in on Tuesday and has already announced that his first foreign visit will be to China.

The official said that under the proposed deal, China will supply nuclear material to Pakistan to meet its energy crisis.

"This has nothing to do with the US-India deal but that has certainly provided us a way out to meet our energy crisis," he said.

For the last many years, Pakistan has failed to meet its growing energy needs and the situation has worsened since November 2007, with the country facing massive power cuts and adopting summer time to benefit the most from daylight and save energy.

"Of course it will take time to finalise the deal after going through its details but the initial talks would start during Zardari's visit and a memorandum of understanding (MoU) may be signed for reaching an agreement," said the official.

Zardari's visit will coincide with the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games September 17.

"Zardari will participate in the closing ceremony as well," said the official.

Pakistan and China have a long history of close cooperation that started in early 50s and saw stronger ties during former prime minister and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's era.

As foreign minister in military dictator Ayub Khan's government, Bhutto played an active role in bringing Pakistan and China closer when the US was distancing itself from Pakistan in the mid 1960s.

In the last three years, there have been 10 state visits by Pakistani officials to China. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was the last top official to visit China last month. In April, former president Pervez Musharraf has also visited the country.

Al-Qaida has released a video featuring a senior commander who was rumoured to have been killed in Pakistan in July, threatening more attacks against Denmark after a suicide bombing on its Embassy in Islamabad, according to the SITE group which monitors Islamist websites.

"We have warned previously - and we warn once more - the crusader states which insult, mock and defame our Prophet and Quran in their media and occupy our lands, steal our treasure and kill our brothers that we will exact revenge at the appropriate time and place," Mustafa Abu al-Yazid said in the video, SITE reported on Thursday.

The Embassy in June bombing killed six Pakistanis and came amid anger in the Muslim world over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed first printed in Danish newspapers in 2005.

There were reports that Yazid was killed in a July air strike on a hideout in a tribal region of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, but the identity of the slain militant was never confirmed.

Yazid, an Egyptian Al-Qaida commander based in Afghanistan, was identified by the 9/11 Commission as the group's chief financial manager.

The US-based SITE Intelligence Group said the video, released by Al-Qaida's media arm Al-Sahab, shows the Saudi suicide bomber who carried out the attack and an "animation" of the bombing itself.

Yazid said the Embassy attack "is but the beginning. If you don't end your errant ways and aggression," SITE said in a translation of the video message, adding that the date it was recorded was not known.

Six persons, including three women, were killed and 20 others injured in a missile strike by unmanned US drones on a house and a seminary linked to a key Taliban commander Jalauddin Haqqani in Pakistan's restive North Waziristan tribal region on Monday.

The suspected drones operated by the US-led forces in Afghanistan fired six to seven guided missiles at the seminary in Tanda Darpakhel, two kilometres from Miranshah, the headquarters of North Waziristan.

Four missiles hit a madrassa run by senior Taliban leader Jalaluddin Haqqani while three hit nearby houses. A news agency quoted official sources and local residents as saying.
Three female seminary students and three labourers were among the dead, official sources said, but other sources said that among the killed were three militants.

Whether Haqqani, who is a close aide of fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar was present in the area or not at the time of the strike, was not known.

The Pasthun leader of Khost in Afghanistan has not seen since the fall of the Taliban regime in Kabul in 2001.

Taliban fighters surrounded the area around the madrassa and did not allow people to approach the site. North and South Waziristan tribal regions are considered strongholds of the Pakistani Taliban led by Baitullah Mehsud.

Since last week, Pakistan's tribal belt has witnessed a sharp increase in attacks by drones operated by US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan. More than 40 people have died in these attacks.

Twenty people, a majority of them women and children, were killed in a raid in South Waziristan by gunship helicopters and commandos of the coalition forces on September three.

That attack marked the first time that US-led ground forces from Afghanistan had intruded into Pakistan.