48 | NOVEMBER 28 • 2024
J
N

A

dd Rick Loewenstein’s name
to the roster of another hall
of fame.
After being inducted into the Detroit
Men’s Senior Baseball League Hall of
Fame in 2008 and Michigan Jewish
Sports Hall of Fame in 2009, the
64-year-old West Bloomfield resident
joined the Babson College Athletics
Hall of Fame in September.
It took a long time — more than
40 years after his 1982 graduation
from Babson — for Loewenstein to be
inducted into the Babson Athletics Hall
of Fame, which was founded in 1991,
but he wasn’t sweating it.
“Let me put it this way. I wasn’t wait-
ing by the phone, but I always knew
when the time came, it would be an
honor. I’m just glad I wasn’t inducted
posthumously,
” he said, laughing.
“Some former Babson teammates I
spoke with at the Hall of Fame induc-
tion thought I was already in the Hall of
Fame,
” he said.
Looking back, Loewenstein said, he
made a great decision to attend Babson
because he thrived at the Massachusetts
school.
He said he sharpened his leadership

skills through being a team captain
there, and he laid the foundation for a
business career that has included being
the CEO of the Gleaners Community
Food Bank of Southeastern Michigan
and JARC, and chief advancement
officer for the Cranbrook Educational
Community.
“There’s no greater experience than
being a student-athlete in college,
whether it’s Division I, II or III,
” he said.
“You’re forced to become disciplined
and focused to juggle your studies,
practices and games and, because I
played two sports, I was never out of
season.
“On top of all that, I got to share that
experience playing the sports I loved
with friends for life.
”
Loewenstein was a star in baseball
and men’s hockey at Babson from 1978-
82.
A catcher for the Babson baseball
team, he batted .431 with five triples in
1981, both school single-season records
at the time. His 14 career triples are
still a school record, and his .374 career
batting average stood as the best in pro-
gram history for nearly three decades.
A three-time captain of the baseball

team, he was a First Team All-Eastern
College Athletic Conference selection
in 1982.
On the ice, the defenseman led the
Beavers to their first NCAA Division
III tournament appearance in program
history when he was a senior.
Loewenstein was named Babson’s
Athlete of the Year — male or female —
when he was a freshman and senior.
Eighty-four individuals and five
teams are in the Babson Athletics Hall
of Fame.
Individual accomplishments aren’t
the only criteria for induction, accord-
ing to a news release from the school.
Entry into the Hall of Fame also
requires leadership, dedication to the
athlete’s sport and to the college, good
sportsmanship and a willingness to
sacrifice personal glory for the good of
the team.
“Each Hall of Fame inductee rep-
resented Babson with dignity, grace,
and pride in and out of competition,
”
according to the news release.
Babson is a private business school
located in Wellesley, Mass., near
Boston. It had an enrollment of about
4,000 undergraduate and graduate stu-

dents in 2022.
It’s been ranked the No. 1 undergrad-
uate school for entrepreneurship for 27
years and was recently ranked No. 2 in
the Wall Street Journal/College Pulse
2025 Best Colleges in the U.S. report.
Among its famous alumni is Jewish
Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman.
Why did Loewenstein decide to
attend Babson back in the late 1970s?
He said he was looking for a small
school where he could play baseball
and hockey and study business, and
he had some family connections to the
Boston area.
His brother Mark attended Boston
University and his mother, Phyllis, now
88, was from the Boston area.
Loewenstein and his wife, Dana, a
former trial attorney and former direc-
tor of leadership giving at the Hillel
Jewish Student Center at Michigan
State University, have been married for
42 years.
They work together at
TeamGameAdvisors, a consulting firm
founded in 2019 that focuses on behav-
ioral health and assistive technology.
They have two sons, Alex, 32, and
Jeremy, 29, who each played base-
ball and hockey at Bloomfield Hills
Cranbrook-Kingswood High School.
Alex was a baseball team captain,
Jeremy was a baseball team and hock-
ey team captain, and each was a state
champion hockey player.
Alex was a member of the U.S. men’s
fastpitch softball team that participated
in the 2022 Maccabiah Games in Israel.
Rick was a three-sport star at
Cranbrook-Kingswood. He played
baseball, boys hockey and boys soccer
there, and served as a baseball team and
boys soccer team captain.
He remains active in sports. He’s still
playing in the Detroit Men’s Senior
Baseball League, and he’s been a high
school hockey official for more than a
decade.

Send sports news to stevestein502004@

yahoo.com.

The Wait Was Worth It

Rick Loewenstein, a 2009 inductee into the Michigan Jewish Sports
Hall of Fame, joins the Babson College Athletics Hall of Fame.

STEVE STEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

SPORTS HIGHLIGHTS

LEFT: The Loewenstein family attended
Rick’s induction into the Babson College
Athletics Hall of Fame. From left are Alex,
Rick, Dana and Jeremy Loewenstein.
RIGHT: Rick Loewenstein returns to the
Babson College baseball diamond where
he was a star from 1978-82.

PHOTOS HAVE BEEN SUBMITTED