James Caan Took a Break From Acting to Coach Little League Baseball

With his role in The Godfather, James Caan established himself as a go-to actor for playing tough, hotheaded characters. The actor, who died this week, had a string of successful roles, but in the 1980s, he stepped away from acting altogether. After his sister’s death, Caan began using cocaine and temporarily left Hollywood in an effort to stop. In the years he wasn’t working as an actor, Caan took on a new role as a children’s baseball coach.

The actor had five children

Caan was married four times and had five children with his wives. He explained that as a father, he wanted to give his children a better childhood than he had.

“I never saw my dad cry. My son saw me cry,” he told Esquire in 2003. “My dad never told me he loved me, and consequently I told Scott I loved him every other minute. The point is, I’ll make less mistakes than my dad, my sons hopefully will make less mistakes than me, and their sons will make less mistakes than their dads. And one of these days, maybe we’ll raise a perfect Caan.”

James Caan took a break from acting in the 1980s and coached baseball

In 1981, Caan’s younger sister Barbara died of leukemia. The loss had a profound effect on him.

“Barbara was like my best friend,” he told The Independent in 2021. “She was the only person I was afraid of in the world. When she died, passion became this whole thing with me. That’s what I loved about my sister: she was just so passionate about whatever she did. I started doing cocaine, which is like a death sentence. That lasted a while.”

To focus on stopping his cocaine use, Caan left Hollywood and began coaching a children’s baseball team. Though it was a sharp turn from his acting career, he said he loved it. It didn’t represent a loss of creativity in his life, but a new version of it.

“I had great, great times as a Little League coach,” he said. “People were talking about me quitting acting, and they would say, ‘What about your creative juices?’ Coaching is creative, because you could take a kid who thought he wasn’t any good and, within four minutes, change his mind. And I didn’t have to wait six months for them to put music to it.”

James Caan had high hopes for his son in baseball

Caan said he could be “a little hyper” as a baseball coach, and he couldn’t help but have high hopes for his son’s future in the sport. 

“My kid was a great baseball player,” he said. “I thought I had it made. Front-row seats at Yankee Stadium. Then he turned sixteen and wanted to be a rapper.”

He explained that his own athletic dreams were crushed by a different sport: golf. 

“I always thought of myself as some sort of athlete until I started playing golf a couple years ago.”

How to get help: In the U.S., contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration helpline at 1-800-662-4357.