It appears that Bill Gates is going the way of Phil Rizzuto and Ralph Kiner. For those of us old enough to remember, both Rizzuto and Kiner were the absolute pinnacle of professional baseball. They went on to become Baseball Hall of Famers and are regarded as two of the best baseball players of all time.Each then embarked on a subsequent career as a sports announcer – second-rate at best – for many years. Unfortunately, they’ll both be remembered for their longer period of broadcaster mediocrity than for their baseball playing superiority.

Bill Gates is following the same path. Rising to become arguably one of the most important businessmen ever to walk the earth by adding untold trillions to the value of the world economy, he is now venturing  on new career in a philanthropic direction. His foundation focuses on education, but has had only mediocre results even by his own admission.  And these results follow from an unwillingness to fight for his philanthropy the way he did his business.

Bill Gates and his foundation have intentionally failed to take on the most important detractor from present day education — that being the domination of public schools (or more properly government schools and the unions that run them) as well as the lack of competition in that industry. In fact, Gates provides virtually no funds for vouchers or related programs that might dislodge this cancer of public education, with the explanation that he doesn’t really want to pick a fight with the unions. Such an cowardly attitude would certainly have prevented the successes he saw in his business career. It’s a shame that Gates will likely be remembered as an individual who squandered more hard-earned, philanthropic funds than ever thought possible.