PORTLAND – Marianne McGettigan has been a baseball fan since childhood, listening to Red Sox games from the back porch of her suburban Boston home. But her view of the game today is a lot less romantic than it was back then.

As chief lobbyist for the Major League Baseball Players Association, McGettigan has learned that, more than just a game, baseball is big business.

“I’ve seen it up close,” said McGettigan, a lawyer at the Portland firm of Verrill & Dana. “And the more you know about the business, the more baseball loses its charm.”

McGettigan, 51, of Freeport, lobbies Congress on behalf of the union that is again at odds with major-league owners over such issues as a salary cap, revenue sharing and drug testing. Her client – the players – threaten to strike unless an agreement is reached soon.

Although not directly involved in the current collective bargaining talks, McGettigan does advise the union, and frequently is consulted on matters related to negotiations.

“Marianne’s talent is that she knows how to attack a given problem and solve it,” said Donald Fehr, executive director and general counsel of the players’ union. “She’s also just very knowledgeable on the issues.”

McGettigan’s involvement with the player’s union grew out of her work for Slade Gorton. The former attorney general of Washington state hired her in 1975, after she graduated from Boston University Law School, and she remained on his staff when he went on to the U.S. Senate.

Gorton previously had sued Major League Baseball for folding, after just one year, an American League franchise called the Seattle Pilots. The settlement in that case ultimately led to the creation in 1977 of the Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays.

One of McGettigan’s first tasks on Gorton’s Senate staff was to draft legislation that would restrict sports teams’ ability to suddenly relocate, as the Baltimore Colts football team did when it moved in the middle of the night to Indianapolis.

That work on franchise relocation led to a friendship with Fehr, and she was hired as chief lobbyist for the players’ union.

During the 1994 baseball strike, McGettigan shrewdly used ballplayers themselves to lobby members of Congress, recognizing that “if there’s anyone [an elected official] really likes to meet, it’s an athlete.”

Among the players she knows well are Dave Winfield, Barry Larkin, Orel Hershiser, Tom Glavine, Terry Pendleton, David Cone, Eddie Murray and Jim Abbott, the former Yankee pitcher who was born without a right hand.

“Jim once said to me, ‘The best part of all this is that we have a woman representing us,”‘ McGettigan said. “There we were, two people who you wouldn’t think would be given a chance, and we were given a chance.”

McGettigan’s work on behalf of the union yielded historic results in 1998, when Congress passed the Curt Flood Act, stripping Major League Baseball of much of its antitrust exemption by making league rules regarding player movement and compensation subject to federal antitrust laws.