"There should be no baseball season this year," Alfredo Pedrique, a former Major League Baseball player, said during a radio interview.
He said he had seen people eating out of rubbish bins, and cited the "number of children who are dying because of the lack of food and medicine".
Pedrique said it was a humanitarian issue, not a political one.
The baseball coach appealed to the team owners in the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League (LVBP) to support his call "out of respect for the Venezuelans who are sacrificing their lives for the freedom of this country, for the benefit of all".
Baseball is Venezuela's most popular sport - outdoing football, unlike many of its neighbours in South America.
The call comes days after Venezuela lost the right to host the 2018 Caribbean Series tournament, which will now be played in Mexico instead.
Tournament organisers did not specify a reason, but Venezuela has been hit by consistent political instability and street protests for months, which have led to dozens of deaths.
Angry demonstrations against President Nicolas Maduro, which have taken place on an almost daily basis since April, show no sign of abating.
The opposition claims Mr Maduro's government has severely damaged the country's economy, and is calling for early elections.
The government has blamed the opposition for the violence at the protests saying it uses teenagers and children as "cannon fodder".

The latest threats bring the number of incidents to 69 in 27 states in the past month, according to the JCC Association of North America.
No bombs were found at any of the centres targeted with telephone calls.
Last week, 27 Jewish community centres in 17 US states reported receiving hoax bomb threats.
All of the threats made on Monday, along with previous incidents in January, turned out to be false and Jewish centres have since reopened with normal services resumed.
Responding to the latest incidents, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that US President Donald Trump had made it "abundantly clear" that such actions were "unacceptable".
"Hatred and hate-motivated violence of any kind have no place in a country founded on the promise of individual freedom," the statement, which was shared on Twitter by NBC News correspondent Peter Alexander, said.
Mr Trump's daughter Ivanka - who has converted to Judaism and whose husband is Jewish - also condemned the threats.
Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said that action must be taken to prevent further incidents.
In a post on Twitter, Mrs Clinton wrote: "JCC threats, cemetery desecration and online attacks are so troubling and they need to be stopped. Everyone must speak out, starting w/@POTUS."
The threats were made to the Jewish community centres through calls that were both pre-recorded and live, with suspects using voice-disguising technology, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Since the beginning of the year, there have been reports of threats to centres in New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Delaware, Connecticut, Alabama, California, Maine, Tennessee, South Carolina, Missouri, Wisconsin, Texas and Kansas.
The JCC Association of North America, a network of health and education centres, has since been reviewing its security plans.
In an earlier statement the FBI said that along with the US justice department it was investigating possible civil rights violations in connection with the threats.
The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish anti-bigotry organisation, said in a statement that it was "deeply disturbed" by the latest threats to the Jewish community.
Meanwhile, more than 100 headstones have been damaged at a Jewish cemetery in St Louis, Missouri, local media report.
In the Canadian city of Toronto, Mayor John Tory has condemned anti-Semitic hate notes left outside the homes of Jewish residents.
Venezuela's baseball season should be cancelled due to the country's ongoing crisis, a leading coach has said.
[NEXT_CONCEPT]
The FBI is investigating another wave of bomb threats to Jewish facilities in the US after 11 sites were evacuated on Monday.