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

