Flashback Friday: Kelly Gruber’s Cameo on “Eric’s World”

The final Flashback Friday of the season is admittedly a bit of an odd one; it’s a cameo by Kelly Gruber on TVO’s “Eric’s World”.

Eric of course being Eric Nagler, which most will probably remember from the Canadian classic, “The Elephant Show” starring Sharon Lois and Bram.

Now, I don’t have an exact date or even year of when this episode aired, but one can only assume it was either during 1991 or 1992. Eric’s World was on the air from 1991-1996, and Kelly Gruber’s tenure with the Blue Jays ended following the 1992 season.

Anyway, the premise of the episode entitled “The Collectors” is young Max is trying to collect a complete set of baseball cards. The one player that eludes his complete set is none other than Blue Jays third baseman, Kelly Gruber.

To everyone’s surprise, Kelly Gruber himself arrives at the trailer park with his baby in tow (for some reason), and saves the day.

If you feel like watching the entire episode for whatever reason, you can do so here here and here, but if you just want to skip ahead to the Gruber cameo, click on the video below.

Max offers to buy the Kelly Gruber card off him, but Gruber counters with a trade. The proposal is quite interesting, to say the least.

Max – “How about for a … Jose Canseco?”
Kelly – “I think I’m worth about two Jose Canseco’s.”

As far as I can remember, Kelly Gruber was one of the few Blue Jays to make a cameo on a Canadian television show, let alone a kid’s show. Which is somewhat surprising, considering how high profile the Blue Jays were in the early 90’s.

Yet thanks to Youtube, these entertaining and sometimes confusing videos from our childhood continue to be unearthed for us to relive all over again.

Hat tip to Erika Gilbert for the unique Blue Jays find. Thanks to everyone for their suggestions for this year’s Flashback Friday posts. They’ll be back in full force next April.