His son Scott also played baseball as well as basketball and soccer, on teams that his dad coached, but it was his skill with a bat that had his father thinking major leagues and, a few years later, thinking about cocaine rehab.
“I thought I was fooling my son. I was so stupid,” Caan says. “I mean, you’re never consciously hurting people, but when you look back, you go, ‘Oh my God.’ I didn’t think he knew what was going on, you know; you think that kids aren’t bright enough. But that’s what woke me up, pretty much. Scott went after some guy – Scott was 15, 16 – with a baseball bat. He was going to kill him. A dope dealer. My son! It’s like crying out of one eye and smiling out of the other, you know? That was like the rude awakening. It was over.”