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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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Session:         Page of 1029

and listening to another on the radio. Rose Oller scoffed, “This is a fine way to run a publishing house.” I said, “Rose, you've got three choices. You can either watch the Yankees on television, listen to the Giants on the radio, or get the hell out of here.” She said, “I guess I'll watch the tele- vision,” so she sat down and started yelling with us.

When you have nice relationships, you can behave like this. One of the lucky things, I think, about Random House is, because both Donald and I did selling for many years, that we actually knew the book sellers and were on very intimate terms with them.

This was supplemented when I went on “What's My Line?” and started lecturing because when I lectured I would go to towns where no publisher had ever been and on “What's My Line?” I would often sneak in the name of a book seller. You know, if somebody came from Cleveland, I would mention a couple of bookstores in Cleveland. CBS would write me angry letters, but I went on doing it, anyhow. Of course, it delighted them to be mentioned. So I had lots of friends in publishing.

Q:

About sports a little bit...do you think that fifteen years later sports has changed much?

Cerf:

Yes. I think that baseball has slipped a great deal because it's such a slow game. They are going to have to do something to speed the game up. Professional football is so much more exciting to watch than baseball. In baseball, all





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