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Giants right-hander Tim Lincecum has a few more days remaining in his NL Cy Young reign, time he’s likely to spend lying low after today’s revelation he was charged with speeding and marijuana possession last week in Clark County, WA. Finally, a Bay Area icon is busted for PED’s (and if you don’t think enjoyment of Lincecum’s performances is positively enhanced by weed, would you at least believe AT&T Park’s garlic fries are just a bit tastier?) and the SF Chronicle’s Ray Ratto — no stranger to daring behavior (you’ve seen his haircut, right?) cannot hide his disgust. “High and speeding at 8 in the morning? Is life that grippingly dull in the offseason? Or are you just nuts?”

That’s the hard part to reconcile. Eight a.m. is just too early in the day to spark up, and speeding on the freeway at 8 a.m. even if you’re straight as a javelin is just asking to get caught. I mean, who else is on the road that early other than truckers? Doing both, therefore, is pretty well inexcusable.

The lessons Lincecum will earn from this, his first official brush with the law as someone whose every move is monitored, are clear. He’ll have to do all the P.R. mea culpas, but the first ought to be about vehicular safety. You can draw your personal line of outrage anywhere you want here, but it’s the driving part that is clearly the most disturbing judgmental lapse of all. That’s where the apology-fest should start, and he can take it wherever he wants (or is told to by the Giants) after that.

Whether or not 8am is too early to be high is entirely a matter of opinion. I mean, perhaps Lincecum had been up since 5. But on the topic of his driving whilst baked, the SF hurler has undoubtedly been defamed by the veteran columnist. The Chronicle’s own source for the story quotes a Washington State trooper describing Linceum as “not appearing impaired.”