"Go Greens!" Another Grammatical Analysis

First off: I am aware there is another thread with this title, but the topic is different. An answer there, however, made me wonder:

There is a common phrase used when rooting for a sports team:

Go <teamname>!

e.g. "Go Bears" for a team named "Someplace Bears".

My question is if there isn't a comma missing after "go". Wouldn't, without a comma, the teamname become a sort-of place/direction where the implied addressee is instructed to go? Like in e.g. "go left!". Even in phrases like "go crazy" the adjective can be analysed as being such a metaphorical direction or place the (implicitly) addressed one should go to(wards). But here the addressee is specified and the direction is not.

For comparison, in German there is a difference:

Verderben, gehe deinen Gang! (Schiller, Fiesco, Act 5)

Which translated (by Flora Kimmich) is: "[And now,] destruction, take your course."

The destruction is addressed and given a command. Furthermore, there is a comma after "destruction" and the sentence - to my eyes - has the same structure as the one I asked about. Whereas the hypothetical:

Verderben gehe deinen Gang!

would rather mean destruction may/should follow your path. The "you" is addressed, not the destruction.

I'd say something like Go Bears! should be classed as an optative subjunctive along the lines of Long live the king! with the definition of go being Oxford English Dictionary's I.17.a. "To be agreeable or successful; to meet with applause, acclaim, or support; to succeed", similar in intended meaing to May the Bears be successful! Optative subjunctives often have unusual word order with the subject coming after the verb (without a pause in speech or a comma in writing) and express a wish, like many people do when saying something like Go (team)!

For example, here it is in a Holiday & Travel piece on Chicago.

As the leaves turn, September and October is the perfect time to visit this glorious, clean and vibrant city with its laidback people and great sports venues. Go Bears! (Irish News)

As Nuclear Hoagie points out, there is a clear difference with or without a comma. In the vast majority of instances - said out of earshot of the actual team - it expresses a general wish, and hence the optative subjunctive is the best way to class it. Were there to be a comma, we could perhaps understand it as an imperative, but the addressee would have to be somewhere within earshot, and it would be a little awkward: ? Go, Bears! does not seem to reasonably fall into the same category as Run, Forrest!

Also, whereas imperatives can be negated, it's not possible here, at least not without forcing a different interpretation of go.

• Don't run, Forrest!
• *Don't go Bears!

Further, Go Bears! doesn't make sense if we describe the speech act with a verb like urge. So we could have,

• And then he urged destruction to take its course.

But in most situations where Go Bears! is said, we would not have

• ?And then he urged the Bears to go.

I agree with user Araucaria - Him's comment on the difference in intonation between the Go Bears! construciton and the imperative. I had originally taken this to be a pause / no pause difference but I think he captures it more accurately:

I don't believe there's ever a pause in either the imperative or the Go Bears construction. There's a big difference in the intonation, though. In Go, Tony, the nucleus of the intonational phrase will be on Go and Tony will be in the tail, relatively quiet in comparison and with a low pitch. There will be no onset. In contrast, in Go Tony!, the first stress, the onset, will be on the word Go. The nucleus, which will be more prominent--and in UK English higher pitch--will fall on the first syllable of Tony.