the garage gospel: shot out of something, down on the knees
It was less like falling than being shot out of something, is the way I recall it. It did not did not happen in slow motion. [...] A rude whip-lashing shove square in the back and my promising body with all its webs of nerves pulsing and firing was in full airborne flight and came down on my knees
Context
The martyrdom itself, the founding injury of the whole lineage: "less like falling than being shot out of something," a "whip-lashing shove square in the back" and the "promising body with all its webs of nerves pulsing and firing" comes down on its knees on hot asphalt. The body at its peak of nervous aliveness is destroyed in an instant — the knees flayed to the bone, the racquet pinwheeling off — and the injury is permanent (he "never got to wave my hankie at anything beyond the near- and almost-great"). The athletic body's catastrophe is total and irreversible: one slip, and the instrument is wrecked for life.