I remember the talk in the hallways at school the morning after ABC-TV reran “Brian’s Song” sometime in the mid-’70s. Every kid who watched it, or caught it the first time in 1971, said the same thing, more or less, the boys especially. Some variation on a theme of awkward, stupidly embarrassed admission: Gotta admit, got kinda choked up there at the end. That was James Caan’s doing. He made a nation choke up en masse, in his deathbed scene opposite Billy Dee Williams. The stardom achieved by Caan, who died at 82 Wednesday, was ignited by “Brian’s Song,” in which he played Brian Piccolo of the…
