Long after fans, players and assistant coaches headed to the locker room, Shealynn Wine centered her digital camera on her husband, Robbie, and son, Cory, both of whom were wearing Penn State baseball uniforms.

"This may never happen again," she said, fully aware of the embarrassment felt by her son and the frequency of father-son photos taken on the baseball field throughout her lifetime.

At this moment, you couldn't pry a smile out of Cory, Penn State's 6-foot-5 freshman first baseman. It's not that different than a pre-prom photo in front of a dozen or so unfamiliar parental faces or a church photo in front of grandma and grandpa. Cory still has his equipment bag on his shoulder, ready to get out of the entire situation.

Robbie, the second-year Penn State head coach, stands waiting, knowing the picture will eventually be taken. The young guy will give in. Robbie knows -- he's been a kid before, though he grew up fast. The Houston Astros selected the Pennsylvania native with the No. 8 overall pick in the 1983 draft, cutting his All-America college career at Oklahoma State two years short.

A year later, he married Shealynn, whom he met in college, before his first full season in the Astros organization. After spending two years making his way through the minor leagues, Robbie got his first call up to the majors in September 1986, a month before Cory was born. He was in and out of the majors for two seasons, playing 23 games in all, before returning to the minors, but not before catching for legendary pitcher Nolan Ryan.

It was during his second go-around in the minors that Robbie decided he wanted to coach. Since getting his shot at the majors, his role had now been defined as an aging catcher who could tutor young pitching prospects. He felt like a coach already, so why not become one officially?

The picture is taken

Cory gets ready to head into the visitor's locker room in Beaver Stadium, where the baseball team keeps its locker room in the spring, but a request for another photo is made. From a different angle? Why? After all that agony of just taking one, you want me to stand here and take another? Yes, says mom.

One picture, perhaps both, will find its way off the digital camera and onto a computer and then possibly into a frame, where the representation of father and son, coach and player, will rest.

Cory could care less about that, standing on the first base line with dirt, grass and chalk -- baseball things -- underneath his feet. He's just happy more people weren't around to see his father, his coach, with his arm around him on Beaver Field. That embrace goes beyond the bounds of the player-coach relationship, and that's all Cory wants with his father when they are anywhere near the field.

Sweet Child of Mine

Cory doesn't want anyone to think that when "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns N' Roses plays when he heads to the batter's box, it's a tribute to his father. He just likes the way the beginning of the song sounds.

He doesn't like anyone calling the coach of the Penn State baseball team his "dad" either.

"I don't like to think of it like that at all," Cory says. "You look at it as he's your dad, but I like to think of it as he's your coach. That's what I call him, 'Coach.' "

To the relief of both, Cory feels the manner in which he interacts with his father in baseball situations is the reason teammates have been accepting of him this season.

He's not just the coach's son. He's a legitimate player who stands as a target for infielders to throw at and boasts home run power from the batter's box. His baseball skills help out, but so do the efforts of Cory and Robbie to not stray past the player-coach relationship.

"The team is so important that you don't pry into the business of the team," Robbie says of the topic of conversations with Cory. "You just kind of keep it general. You talk about his hitting, you talk about just real vague stuff."

As a power-hitting, left-handed first baseman, Cory was recruited by schools like Alabama, Arizona and Kansas before his father, then a hitting instructor at Oklahoma State, took the Penn State job in summer 2004. After that, the recruiting process ended.

"Everybody knew, or assumed, that he was going to be with me," Robbie says.

Everybody was right.

"It kind of ruled everyone else out," Cory says.

But had Robbie not taken the Penn State job, Cory says he probably wouldn't have stayed in Stillwater, Okla., to play at Oklahoma State. Robbie would have been fine with that, realizing it would have been hard on the head coach if he had an assistant on his staff with a particular interest in a particular player.

Robbie feels it's easier to be his son's head coach because the players realize he can't act in the best interest of his son if the team is going to have any success.

"I feel comfortable with does he play or not play? Do I pinch hit for him or not? And he'll accept it, I'll accept it, and nobody's going to say anything because I think it's best for the team," Robbie says.

Robbie has tried not to cross that line throughout Cory's baseball career. Just because Robbie was a former professional player didn't mean he would invade the space of whomever Cory's coach was.

"I would go watch him, but I would never go, 'Hey try this, do that' during a game. If you're having a bad day, you're doing it on your own and then we'd talk afterwards," Robbie says.

Cory says his father knows his swing inside and out. Robbie says Cory knows it equally as well, but will still make minor suggestions if needed in the dugout, though nothing more substantial than he would for any other player.

"[Robbie] just treats him like another player on the team," center fielder Garrett Field says. "It's not really a big deal."

Field should know. He's seen how Robbie treats Cory as a son back when the Wine family lived in Stillwater, a college town like State College, on a smaller scale. Garrett and Cory, roommates at Penn State, on campus and on the road, have been friends since they were 10 years old, when the Wine family moved to Stillwater after Robbie accepted the hitting coach job at Oklahoma State in 1997.

After Robbie replaced the retired Joe Hindelang at Penn State and Cory decided to follow his father to Happy Valley, Garrett agreed to come without ever seeing the campus. The two continue to be teammates, as they have since the Wines moved to Stillwater eight years ago.

Knowing he would possibly be heading to school with one of his best friends just made Cory's choice to come to Penn State even easier.

"I can't even say it was really a decision," Shealynn says. "It was just what he wanted to do. He just wanted to play for his dad."

Growing up baseball

Before their seven-year stay in Stillwater, the Wine family -- Robbie, Shealynn, Cory and his younger sister Mackenzie -- lived in Milwaukee for four years, where Robbie was an assistant coach with the Milwaukee Brewers.

While with the Brewers, Robbie's goal was to become a major league manager, but the only way to do that was to become a minor league manager first. And that would be a step down from Robbie's then-major league assistant coaching position.

Instead, he decided to become a hitting instructor at the school he once played for, and the family moved cross country again, like they had countless times during Robbie's minor league career. Robbie and Shealynn can't remember off hand how many times they moved, only that they "got really good at packing and unpacking," Shealynn says.

Near the end of his playing days, Robbie was traded, sold and released all in one year. His last stop with a Cleveland Indians AA affiliate, which was in need of a catcher to tutor young pitchers like future All-Star Charles Nagy, made Robbie, around age 30, feel relatively old.

"I felt like a coach," Robbie says. "I was down there with all these young guys with their young wives and young families and they're looking at us, like we got two kids. I had a lot of fun [playing] but realized I wanted to start coaching."

Through all the moves, Cory went along with his parents and younger sister. After realizing he wanted to coach, Robbie found a job in 1991 with a minor league team in Florida with the help of some friends with the New York Mets organization. The next season he was in Milwaukee as a bullpen catcher and assistant coach for newly hired manager Phil Garner, with whom Robbie played with in the Astros organization.

It was in Milwaukee while hanging around the major league clubhouse, that Cory realized he was going to play baseball. Around the age of 10, he remembers meeting guys like outfielder Greg Vaughn and shortstop Pat Listach. In Cory's eyes, they seemed like they were having a good time and were just normal guys, not professional athletes.

This interaction with major league players was similar to the experience Robbie had as a kid. He would sometimes take batting and infield practice with the Philadelphia Phillies, with whom his dad, Bobby, was a coach. Bobby also played for the Phillies and Expos in the 60s and 70s, and now at 67 years old, is an advance scout for the Atlanta Braves.

Home, away from home

Robbie says his father didn't see him play growing up nearly as much as he's seen Cory's games, especially during his high school years.

Perhaps that's why last year, which Robbie spent living in a "bachelor pad" apartment with fellow assistant Zac Cazzelle and since departed assistant Rob Watson, was so tough on him.

It was Robbie's first season as Penn State's head coach. Cory, Shealynn and Mackenzie stayed in Stillwater -- Cory to finish out his senior year of high school, and Mackenzie to say goodbye to her friends. Cory was supposed to be the starting quarterback for Stillwater High, a big deal in a small town.

But after a new group of football coaches moved into town with a football-only philosophy, Cory decided to quit and focus on baseball. He put on 20 pounds that year in the weight room, a gain that has since helped him on the baseball field.

Meanwhile, Robbie, in addition to coaching the team, would try to arrange to see Shealynn whenever possible. She would sometimes drive to away series to meet up, like she did for last year's Iowa series. Robbie would sometimes go down to Oklahoma for recruiting purposes and see the family at the same time. But there was more time apart than time spent together. That became apparent to Robbie when he got to see Cory's high school graduation.

"That kind of hit me why we did all that," Robbie says. "Seeing him being with his friends, graduating, all that was important to me, and to him."

Now, Cory is within driving distance to his parents' house in Boalsburg, but doesn't frequent there too often.

"For laundry," he says.

"We maybe see him once a week at home, if that," Robbie says. "I see him everyday but it's not a father-son deal, it's a player-coach. Maybe I'm spoiled that way, but I don't look at it that way."

Sometimes Shealynn feels he's spoiled and will ask Cory come over for dinner.

The request is answered in the same way many college students respond to something they don't want to do -- with some sort of excuse before eventually giving into the parents' demands.

"He'll go, 'Well, I gotta do study hall hours. Yeah, I can fit it in for an hour,' " Robbie says. "But I like that because he's growing up. He's doing things on his own. Someday you're going to have to do it."

Cory's black Dodge Durango still sits in his parent's driveway. He can't wait to drive it on campus next year. His father, his coach, threatens he's going to get sell it saying: "It's just more gas money, more car payments. It's just another expense. Parking, parking tickets."

What now?

If you hadn't heard by word of mouth that the first baseman and the coach of the Penn State baseball team were related, you wouldn't be able to figure it out by going to a game this year.

Aside the post-game photography session after that one mid-week game, the father-son combination has been all business when it comes to baseball. It's really not that hard for them, since the both have their own goals.

Cory doesn't rule out a career in coaching, but has major league aspirations on his mind first. He knows some people may expect him to get there, just because his grandfather and father did, but he insists he feels no added pressure because of the family history. He just knows that he can do it.

"He's got the same mentality that I had with me growing up, with my father being in baseball. It's just, that's what I'm going to do," Robbie says. "There's nothing that's going to get in your way. You just know it. Whereas other people that don't have fathers in baseball, it might be more a dream than a reality. He doesn't think that I'm anything special, and I played in the big leagues."

Robbie has the evolution of the baseball program in his sights. In Stillwater, the family was settled, and Oklahoma State had an opportunity to go to the NCAA tournament every year. But one day, Cazzelle, a fellow assistant, came into Wine's office told him that the "Penn State guy" had retired.

Robbie didn't give it much thought, but after the season ended he got on the Internet and made a few phone calls to gather some information.

Penn State had all the right answers to Robbie's questions. Was the dedication there to take the program to the NCAA regionals, nationals and eventually the College World Series? Those are places he wants to take Penn State every year, and the university agreed. The new stadium being built this summer was just icing on the cake.

If Cory is part of a new era of Penn State baseball, then this father-son story would become that much sweeter. If not, it won't be that bad. They already have each other figured out pretty well.

"They butt heads every once in a while, that's the whole father-son thing," Shealynn says. "But Robbie's getting smarter and smarter to Cory every year."