Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees are opening the 2026 Major League Baseball regular season on Wednesday night.
The Yankees, who once again fell short of a World Series championship in 2025, will open the regular season against the San Francisco Giants on Wednesday night. The game will be streaming exclusively on Netflix. MLB fans have already taken issue with Netflix's coverage of the season opener, though this is now our reality in 2026. Streaming platforms are very much a part of live sports coverage, like it or not.
Judge and the Yankees, meanwhile, have business to attend do. The Yankees have one real goal in 2026: win a World Series. You can't do that in the season opener, of course, but you can get off to a good start.
The Yankees are essentially running their 2025 team back.
“I love it,” Judge said, per MLB.com. “People might have their opinions on it because we didn’t win it all last year and we fell short in the Division Series, but we get a chance to bring a lot of those guys back – they’re impact players. … I like our chances.”
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Off of the field, meanwhile, it's been a big offseason for Judge.
Judge and his wife, Samantha, have been together for more than a decade. They met when they were teenagers and began dating in high school. Aaron and Samantha have been together ever since.
She was right by his side during the World Baseball Classic, helping him prepare.
“I’m sitting there doing dry swings in my hotel room, having my wife videotape it. You feel like a kid again,” he said. “It has just been a special moment.”
The two went public with their relationship in 2014. Judge and his wife have gone through a lot during his career, including in 2022, when he broke the American League single-season home run record.
“My wife has been with me through it all, and she’s calm as a cucumber, that’s for sure,” Judge told reporters after making history.
Judge's wife chooses to keep a low profile, though
While the wives and girlfriends of top athletes will often have very active - and very public - social media accounts, Samantha Judge is the opposite.
Samantha Judge does not have active public social media profiles. She will occasionally appear on her husband's account, which has more than two million followers, but that's it.
"Happy Mother’s Day! Thank you for blessing my life with so much love and joy every day! 💕," Judge wrote in May of 2025.
Judge's wife has played a role in his career decisions, too. He signed a nine-year, $360 million contract with the Yankees in free agency in 2023. His wife played a role in that decision.
“I met a lot of great teams, a lot of great people along the way,” he said on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon."
“But after every meeting, I’d sit down with my wife, and we’d kind of look at each other and be like, ‘We’re Yankees.’”
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Judge's wife will be on hand for his season opening game against the Giants on Wednesday evening.
It's a long season for MLB players, but Judge benefits from having his wife right by his side.
